Walter Mosley, Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History

Mike B. wrote recently about Walter Mosley's genre-busting Blue Light, but Mosley's not done yet, not by a long shot. His newest book, Workin' on the Chain Gang, is a non-fiction look at the pervasive sense of disenfranchisement that grips nearly every stratum of American society. What's most refreshing to my ears is Mosely's unapologetically Marxist, systemic analysis of what's wrong with American society, and the way he uses that analysis to show the way forward in solidarity, across gender and racial lines.

To put it dramatically and unsubtlely, The Man's got his foot on everyone's neck. It's in all our best interests -- women, men, blacks, browns, gays and lesbians, etc. -- to remove it.