A review by stevia333k
Negroes with Guns by Robert F. Williams

5.0

Very helpful in explaining the intersection of gun control laws before Reagan's governorship mixed with how the SCOTUS didn't declare individual gun rights legal until like 2008. Like if you're talking about gun clubs, that was the basic unit of gun ownership basically, excluding how white fascists were getting guns out of the military.

There's a quote from a personal letter in my life that's basically like I'll be fine, god will save me, regarding a separation/divorce, but then the person saying that lost their house & had to work for the rest of their life... like, yeah there are complications, but the optimism in this book feels painful as someone who's been alive since like the 1990s. But basically, 2 books kind of fit this flow
- "The Myth Of The Entrepreneurial State" which puts way too much faith in the market, even though it argues that the private/public sector distinction is bullshit. As someone living in 2021, damn is it failed
- "Good Muslim Bad Muslim" which gets into how USA's military adapted to people's war & how CIA's terrorism got normalized. Like that specific book only goes up to about 2005, and right now I'm in the 1980s part of it, but still. There's also discussion about various types of Islam, but still.

There were some quotes that made me be like damn, that was a racism problem I've had. Like I need to look back for them, and I got the audiobook version instead of a printed version so oy vey, but still.

Also, the epilogue gives a contemporary take on what "the new left" was, which ends up being a very different take than the one compiled in "goliath" but to be fair the contemporary take was from 1967, while "goliath" was not a contemporary take & had like 50 years of hindsight to work with, as well as mainly focusing on the 1970s.