| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Scott L. Malcomson. One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2000. Pp. viii, 584. $30.00.

Scott L. Malcomson is a highly respected writer with a formidable reputation for thorough research and original analysis. His previous books are Tuturani (1990), his account of a journey through island groups and the Pacific Islands, and Empire's Edge (1994), an itinerary through the crumbling post-Soviet states of decayed communism. In this new, ambitious study, Malcomson turns his eye—an eye that is both scholarly and pertinently autobiographical (including an excellent discussion of how the Oakland of his childhood has changed)—on the history of race in the United States. Unquestionably the most important topic in American history and politics, it is not surprising that such a gifted writer should have returned from his earlier peregrinations to this enduring domestic issue. 1

Malcomson poses the fundamental sociological problematic of American history: why has the American "drive for newness" resulted in creating "new forms of unfreedom," especially unfreedoms rooted in socially constructed distinctions by "race"? His argument is that "American" is "necessarily collective, an identity no one can fully have" (p. 507). This collectivity renders, in his opinion, apologies for past wickedness extraneous. To reach this point, he covers a great deal of ground. . . .

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