Stephen L. Carter

The bestselling author delves into his past and discovers the inspiring story of his grandmother’s extraordinary life She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s—and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male. Eunice Hunton Carter, Stephen Carter’s grandmother, was raised in a world of stultifying expectations about race and gender, yet by the 1940s, her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous black women in America. But her triumphs were shadowed by prejudice and tragedy. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who—together with his friend Dashiell Hammett—would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed. Moving, haunting, and as fast-paced as a novel, Invisible tells the true story of a woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of her time. But Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson’s remarkable book, her long forgotten story is once again visible.

The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster

Invisible

After the death of his father, the flamboyant and controversial Judge Oliver Garland, his son Talcott must unravel the truth about his father's life, a quest that brings him face to face with old scandals and family secrets.

The Emperor of Ocean Park

In an alternate history novel, Lincoln escapes assassination by John Wilkes Booth only to face impeachment, and Abigail Canner, a young black woman involved in his defense, helps investigate the murder of the president's counsel.

The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

While the Kennedy administration furiously debates about a response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 19-year-old black Cornell sophomore Margo Jensen becomes an unwitting pawn in escalating tensions between American and Soviet government forces. By the best-selling author of The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln.

Back Channel

William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law Stephen L Carter

In a climate where whites who criticize affirmative action risk being termed racist and blacks who do the same risk charges of treason and self hatred, a frank and open discussion of racial preference is difficult to achieve. But, in the first book on racial preference written from personal experience, Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, Stephen L. Carter, Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University and self-described beneficiary (and, at times, victim) of affirmative action, does it.Using his own story of success and frustration as “an affirmative action baby” as a point of departure, Carter, who has risen to the top of his profession, provides an incisive analysis of one of the most incendiary topics of our day—as well as an honest critique of the pressures on black professionals and intellectuals to conform to the “politically correct” way of being black.Affirmative action as it is practiced today not only does little to promote racial equality, Carter argues, but also allows the nation to escape rather cheaply from its moral obligation to undo the legacy of slavery. Affirmative action, particularly in hiring often reinforces racist stereotypes by promoting the idea that the black professional cannot aspire to anything more than being “the best black.”Has the time come to abandon these programs? No--but affirmative action must return to its simpler roots, Carter argues: to provide educational opportunities for those who might not otherwise have them. Then the beneficiaries should demand to be held to the same standards as anyone else.

Reflections Of An Affirmative Action Baby

In the summer of 1952, twenty prominent men gather at a secret meeting on Martha's Vineyard and devise a plot to manipulate the President of the United States. Soon after, the body of one of these men is found by Eddie Wesley, Harlem's rising literary sta

Palace Council

Władca Ocean Park

In the peaceful New England university town of Elm Harbor, a murder threatens to unravel the thin veneer hiding the racial complications of the town's past, the hidden secrets of a prominent family, and African-American political influence in the United States. By the author of The Emperor of Ocean Park. 300,000 first printing.

New England White

Summoned to the deathbed of former CIA head Jericho Ainsley, Beck DeForde, an agent whose career was marked by a scandal that ended Ainsley's career, learns of an explosive secret involving foreign governments, powerful corporations, and a meltdown of the world's financial system. By the best-selling author of The Emperor of Ocean Park.

Jericho's Fall

Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy

Civility

Heather Graham

Val McDermid

Mary Higgins Clark

S. J. Rozan

Lawrence Block

John Connolly

Dana Stabenow

Mark Billingham

Max Allan Collins

Sarah Weinman

Lisa Unger

Ken Bruen

Alafair Burke

Charlaine Harris

Lee Child

C. J. Box

James Grady

Bryan Gruley

Linda A. Fairstein

Perry Christo is a PI with a past. A one-time NYPD homicide cop, his career was ruined when a cops-on-the-take scandal ripped through the department. Though innocent, Perry had no way to prove it, and when he lost his job it was the last nail in the coffin of a strained marriage - his wife left him and took their young daughter with her. In order to drown his anger and grief, Perry throws himself into mindless work as a private investigator for petty crimes. But one day, a call from an Upper East Side matron, Julia Drusilla, throws his world upside down. Julia needs Perry to track down her stunningly beautiful yet hopelessly aimless daughter, Angelina, who has disappeared. Her 21st birthday is around the corner and she is set to inherit her grandfather's considerable wealth. But as Perry digs deeper into the case, into one suspect after another, he discovers that Angelina may have more to her story than anyone may have realized, and that the person who has threatened her life is now coming after him. SAFE HORIZON Santlofer has arranged to donate any royalties in excess of editor and contributor compensation to Safe Horizon, the leading victim assistance agency in the country. Safe Horizon envisions a society free of family and community violence and leads the way by empowering victims of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking to move from crisis to confidence. www.safehorizon.org

Inherit the Dead

Argues that civil disobedience is necessary to the progress and prosperity of a democracy

A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty

The Dissent of the Governed

After the death of his father, the flamboyant and controversial Judge Oliver Garland, Talcott must unravel the truth about his father's life, a quest that brings him face to face with old scandals and family secrets.

October 1962. The Soviet Union has smuggled missiles into Cuba. Kennedy and Khrushchev are in the midst of a military face-off that could lead to nuclear conflagration. Warships and submarines are on the move. Planes are in the air. Troops are at the ready. Both leaders are surrounded by advisers clamoring for war. The only way for the two leaders to negotiate safely is to open a “back channel”—a surreptitious path of communication hidden from their own people. They need a clandestine emissary nobody would ever suspect. If the secret gets out, her life will be at risk . . . but they're careful not to tell her that. Stephen L. Carter's gripping new novel, Back Channel, is a brilliant amalgam of fact and fiction—a suspenseful retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the fate of the world rests unexpectedly on the shoulders of a young college student. On the island of Curaçao, a visiting Soviet chess champion whispers state secrets to an American acquaintance. In the Atlantic Ocean, a freighter struggles through a squall while trying to avoid surveillance. And in Ithaca, New York, Margo Jensen, one of the few black women at Cornell, is asked to go to Eastern Europe to babysit a madman. As the clock ticks toward World War III, Margo undertakes her harrowing journey. Pursued by the hawks on both sides, protected by nothing but her own ingenuity and courage, Margo is drawn ever more deeply into the crossfire—and into her own family's hidden past.

Between loyalty and disobedience; between recognition of the law's authority and realization that the law is not always right: In America, this conflict is historic, with results as glorious as the mass protests of the civil rights movement and as inglorious as the armed violence of the militia movement. In an impassioned defense of dissent, Stephen L. Carter argues for the dialogue that negotiates this conflict and keeps democracy alive. His book portrays an America dying from a refusal to engage in such a dialogue, a polity where everybody speaks, but nobody listens. The Dissent of the Governed is an eloquent diagnosis of what ails the American body politic--the unwillingness of people in power to hear disagreement unless forced to--and a prescription for a new process of response. Carter examines the divided American political character on dissent, with special reference to religion, identifying it in unexpected places, with an eye toward amending it before it destroys our democracy. At the heart of this work is a rereading of the Declaration of Independence that puts dissent, not consent, at the center of the question of the legitimacy of democratic government. Carter warns that our liberal constitutional ethos--the tendency to assume that the nation must everywhere be morally the same--pressures citizens to be other than themselves when being themselves would lead to disobedience. This tendency, he argues, is particularly hard on religious citizens, whose notion of community may be quite different from that of the sovereign majority of citizens. His book makes a powerful case for the autonomy of communities--especially but not exclusively religious--into which democratic citizens organize themselves as a condition for dissent, dialogue, and independence. With reference to a number of cases, Carter shows how disobedience is sometimes necessary to the heartbeat of our democracy--and how the distinction between challenging accepted norms and challenging the sovereign itself, a distinction crucial to the Declaration of Independence, must be kept alive if Americans are to progress and prosper as a nation.

The man who many considered the peace candidate in the last election was transformed into a war president, writes bestselling author and leading academic Stephen Carter in The Violence of Peace, his new book decoding what President Barack Obama s views on war mean for America and its role in military conflict, now and going forward. As America winds down a war in Iraq, ratchets up another in Afghanistan, and continues a global war on terrorism, Carter delves into the implications of the military philosophy Obama has adopted over his first two years in office. Responding to the invitation that Obama himself issued in his Nobel address, Carter uses the tools of the Western tradition of just and unjust war to evaluate Obama s actions and words about military conflict, offering insight into how the president will handle existing and future wars, and into how his judgment will shape America s fate. Carter also explores war as a way to defend others from tyrannical regimes, which Obama has endorsed but not yet tested, and reveals the surprising ways in which some of the tactics Obama has used or authorized are more extreme than those of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Keeping the nation at peace, Carter writes, often requires battle, and this book lays bare exactly how America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are shaping the way Obama views the country's role in conflict and peace, ultimately determining the fate of the nation.

Stephen L. Carter

Books

Your next favorite book is out there