The Fifth Freedom – Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941–1972: Princeton Studies in American Politics

"The Fifth Freedom is a masterpiece--a brilliant new take on the history of equal opportunity in America. Chen combines the best traditions of history, sociology, and political science to explain the decades-long effort to bring equal protection to the workplace. This gripping account not only charts the long struggle against workplace discrimination, it explains the origins of our ineffectual system of enforcement."--Frank Dobbin, Harvard University

"Chen offers a distinctive and pathbreaking reinterpretation of civil rights law, from the perspective of the states and localities that were the crucibles of policy innovation. Methodologically sophisticated and deeply researched, The Fifth Freedom represents the best of interdisciplinary social science."--Thomas J. Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania

"This is an important, meticulously researched, and engagingly written contribution to our understanding of the origins and consequences of civil rights policies in employment. Chen's analysis highlights the early--and often overlooked--years of the civil rights era, and in so doing, vividly demonstrates both the possibilities and the readily apparent fault lines that continue to impact the politics surrounding efforts to remedy racial inequality."--Paul Frymer, Princeton University

"The Fifth Freedom is an important achievement of historical reconstruction, substantially revising our understanding of the civil rights revolution and the politics behind it. I have tremendous admiration for this book."--Robert C. Lieberman, author of Shaping Race Policy