BEST AUTHOR BEST : DAVID LEVERING LEWIS [2]

.-  WERE. there personal histories or memoirs that inspired you?

'' The Great Dissenter : The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero,'' by Peter S Canellos.

.-  Is there a family member you came across in your research whom you wish you could learn more about?

MY ENSLAVED great-grandmother Clarissa King.  During my research, I came across the receipt of a bill of sale of several enslaved people.

Two of the seven purchased in 1822 - William, age 1, and Elsy, age 2 - had produced three daughters and two sons by 1849, their oldest was Clarissa, born in 1835.

A line slicing through Clarissa's name directed my eyes to the faded penciled notation in her master's hand. '' Sold. September 1852.''

I realized that this young woman must be the mother of Alice, my grandmother.

.-  Which scholarly pathways in African American history have been an exciting surprise for you?

The use of genealogists. Listening carefully to what the archives appear not to tell us.

.-  What book would you recommend for understanding America's current political moment ?

Self-serving or not, my last book, '' The Improbable Wendell Willkie : The Businessman Who Saved the Republican Party and His Country, and Conceived a New World Order.''

The book described a responsible capitalism free of zero-sum fatalism, and visionary enough to embrace a modernizing global south [ and racially equitable United States ].

I might add Richard Slotkin's 2024. '' A Great Disorder : National Myth and the Battle for America.''

.-  You're organizing a literary dinner party.  Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

W.E.B. Du Bois, Wendell Phillips and Zora Neale Hurston.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.