African Americans have been at war with some elements of the white population from the very beginning. In this collection of essays, his first since Airing Dirty Laundry in 1993, Reed explores the many forms that this homefront war has taken. His brilliant social criticism feints deftly among past and present, government and media, personal and political. From the author whose essay style has been compared to the punching power of boxers Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, this book is a series of fast, powerful strikes against America's long tradition of racism.

Ishmael Reed has been described as cavorting "like a black bull in the china shop of Western culture," and The Reed Reader is a collection of the sharp, jagged results of his rampage. In it, one of the most renowned African American writers offers a generous sampling of the brilliant and witty satire, the politically charged, wildly imaginative storytelling, and the caustic cultural criticism that have become his trademarks. In these excerpts from his celebrated novels, poems, plays, and essays, Reed displays an ironic wit, a cold, keen eye for economic exploitation, a hilarious sense of the...

Chappie Puttbutt has moved to North Oakland, still a mixed neighborhood in a rapidly gentrifying city. In need of money and a boost in profile, he agrees to a series of public debates with the right-wing Indian intellectual Shashi Parmar on the topic, 'Was Slavery All That Bad'? Content to be paid to play the foil, Chappie's new job doesn't last long however. An overseas plane crash ignites political tensions between the US and India, and when a hysterical Congress passes a Fugitive Indian Law soon afterward, Shashi looks to Chappie for refuge.

'Reinvents the particulars of slavery in America with a comic rage ... The book explodes. Reed's special grace is anger ... a muscular, luminous prose' The New York Times 'It always was, and will always be the most fearlessly original, most viciously political, most rambunctiously funny epic of slavery ever written. America almost doesn't deserve it' - Marlon James (2015 Man Booker Prize Winner) 'I loves it here ... We gets whipped with a velvet whip, and there's free dentalcare' Three slaves are on the run in the deep South, with their former master hot on their heels and the Civil...