From the lone outcry of Richard Wright's "Black Boy" to the chorusing voices of Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, "Critical Memory" looks across the past half century to assess the current challenges to African American cultural and intellectual life. As Houston A. Baker recalls his own youth in Louisville, Kentucky, and Washington, D.C., he situates such figures as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Shelby Steele, O. J. Simpson, Chris Rock, and Jesse Jackson within such issues as the embattled state of African American manhood and the "financing and promotion of black intellectuals."

The...

In "Nations Divided," Don H. Doyle looks at some unexpected parallels in American and Italian history. What we learn will reattune us to the complexities and ironies of nationalism. During his travels around southern Italy not long ago, Doyle was caught off guard by frequent images of the Confederate battle flag. The flag could also be seen, he was told, waving in the stands at soccer matches. At the same time, a political movement in northern Italy called for secession from the South. A historian with a special interest in the long troubled relationship between the American South and the...