Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson

This is a very exciting approach to studying the issue of race. The author begins with Louis XIV and his minister, M. Colbert, and their investment in the capture and delivery of slaves to the New World. If one accepts that history is an ideological construct, then his book is a recording of how and why that history was written. If one is to build an empire with profits from the torture of human beings, one needs to develop a rationale for those actions. The author has us follow this line of history through great philosophers and statesmen who built upon previous fallacies to advance theories of racial inferiority. They did this by defining race by pigmentation or culture. Many of these theories were built by supposition only and not by hard, firsthand evidence. In this way, the lore of race was built upon a foundation of ignorance and precedent.