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Corey Robin is the author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin and Fear: The History of a Political Idea. He teaches political science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Robin's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, the London Review of Books, and The Nation, among other publications, and has been translated into eleven languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
In his provocative new book, The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, Corey Robin... is deconstructing a sphinx, and his point carries the uncomfortable ring of truth. --The Atlantic When Clarence Thomas took his seat on the Supreme Court, no one could have predicted that he would become both the silent justice and the most influential justice. Corey Robin's elegant and insightful analysis shows how Thomas's blend of black nationalism and conservatism helped him fashion a jurisprudence that will shape American life for years to come. This is the book Court watchers--which we all should be--have waited for. --Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello Clarence Thomas is by far the Supreme Court's most interesting and perplexing justice, criticized by many and understood by few. Working through Thomas's writings, Corey Robin tells a remarkable story about a remarkable figure--a man of complex views whose austere philosophy has been hiding in plain sight. Robin shows us Thomas's black nationalism, his deep pessimism about race relations, his fervent embrace of capitalism, and his stern demand for a severe and uncompromising system of criminal justice. What emerges is a portrait that is as fascinating as it is disturbing. You may think you know who Clarence Thomas is, but you don't know the half of it. This book is a revelation. --Jack M. Balkin, author of Living Originalism It requires the ferocious curiosity and intellectual courage of a Corey Robin to brave one of the most vexing mysteries faced by Supreme Court watchers: How to reconcile Clarence Thomas's radical conservatism with his unforgiving use of race as jurisprudential lodestar? For conservatives blinkered to Thomas's essentialism on race, and for liberals who refuse to reckon with his lived experience of black marginalization and stigma, this book will be equally discomfiting and eye-opening. --Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor, Slate Only a political diagnostician as keenly incisive as Corey Robin could render such a complex and fascinating portrait of Clarence Thomas. This meticulous analysis of the touchstones and turning points in Thomas's life finds ideological consistency in the seemingly quirky patchwork of his thought: an odd amalgam of ultra-libertarian revanchism, patriarchal fundamentalism, black nationalism, and state-backed authoritarianism. Robin delivers a riveting guide to the multiple paradoxes that underlie Thomas's unusually self-protective persona, and masterfully shows their resonance in the juridical rulings that govern us all. --Patricia J. Williams, author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights
