My review of Shelby Steele's "A Bound Man"

America's newest holiday tradition is enjoying a book review on newsprint by me, as exemplified by my 12/25/05 review of Tim Harford's Undercover Economist in the New York Post, my 7/03/07 review of John Lott's Freedomnomics in the Washington Times, and my 12/25/07 review of Shelby Steele's A Bound Man in the W. Times.

Here's the opening:

The rise of Obama

December 25, 2007

By Steve Sailer - One Democratic presidential contender has an inherently fascinating family history: Not only does our largest minority group furnish most of his ancestry, but he was also raised in the capital of a foreign country of enormous importance to America.

And yet, little attention is paid to the stalled campaign of Bill Richardson, even though the governor of New Mexico is three-fourths Hispanic and grew up in Mexico City. Instead, Barack Obama, who, as he made sure to tell us in the opening words of his famous keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, is half-Kenyan and half-white, has cornered the market on Ethnic Electricity.

Whether pro or con, white Americans are simply more interested in blacks than in Latinos. And, over the decades, white sentiment has grown increasingly favorable. Indeed, Mr. Obama has a plausible shot at riding strong early showings in virtually all-white Iowa and New Hampshire to the nomination.

Of course, Mr. Obama is also a more intriguing personality than the mundane Mr. Richardson. The senator's 1995 autobiography, "Dreams from my Father," displays more artistic merit than perhaps any other book written by a recent presidential hopeful.

Thus, the timing is perfect for Hoover Institution literary critic Shelby Steele's terse but remarkably insightful "A Bound Man."

The horse-race forecast in the subtitle isn't what's important. Instead, the former English professor, who, like Mr. Obama, has a black father and a white mother, delivers an intimate and authoritative analysis of how the polite Mr. Obama appeals to white Democrats in the same fashion as Sidney Poitier, the gentlemanly 1960s movie star, and why black voters are less enthusiastic. [More]

Here's a Time essay by Steele summarizing his book.

And here's my much-denounced article on Obama from the March 26, 2007 issue of The American Conservative, "Obama's Identity Crisis," which reached conclusions virtually identical to Steele's.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer