''Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party'' is a 2013 book focusing on the history of the Black Panthers. It is written by Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin.

Reception

General public reviews

Writing in 2013 for the ''Los Angeles Times'',

Hector Tobar In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense o ...

describes ''Black Against Empire'' as an "authoritative if flawed new history" whose "most important contribution... is simply to treat the Black Panthers as the serious political and cultural force they were." As "the most dramatic failing in ''Black Against Empire''", Tobar points to "the authors' lack of critical distance from their subject" which produces images of "Panther leaders who are, for the most part, idealists without noticeable flaws."

Academic reviews

Writing for ''

Reviews in American History ''Reviews in American History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1973 and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. It publishes reviews of new books on the topic of American history, as well as retrospectives on ...

'' in 2014, Jama Lazerow applauds ''Black Against Empire'' as the first authoritative account of the Black Panthers. At the same time, Lazerow notes that one key problem for ''Black Against Empire'' is the weak coverage of the Panthers in serious scholarly discourse to this point: "we now have local studies of nearly two dozen communities, but most of that work has not come from historians and is often of dubious quality. The absence of reliable work may explain why the authors typically write in depth only about the places that produced the most sensational events: the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and New Haven."{{cite journal , last1=Lazerow , first1=Jama , last2=Martin , first2=Waldo E. , title=Getting Right with the Panthers , journal=Reviews in American History , date=2014 , volume=42 , issue=1 , pages=162–168 , doi=10.1353/rah.2014.0013 , jstor=43663492 , issn=0048-7511

References

2013 non-fiction books Works about the Black Panther Party University of California Press books