This week, we are giving away a galley proof of Becky Pettit's excellent Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress. To enter, like our Facebook page by 4 p.m., Thursday, June 21. Here is brief description of the book:

In Invisible Men, sociologist Becky Pettit demonstrates another vexing fact of mass incarceration: most national surveys do not account for prison inmates, a fact that results in a misrepresentation of U.S. political, economic, and social conditions in general and black progress in particular. Invisible Men provides an eye-opening examination of how mass incarceration has concealed decades of racial inequality. [...]


Invisible Men provides a vital reality check for social researchers, lawmakers, and anyone who cares about racial equality. The book shows that more than a half century after the first civil rights legislation, the dismal fact of mass incarceration inflicts widespread and enduring damage by undermining the fair allocation of public resources and political representation, by depriving the children of inmates of their parents' economic and emotional participation, and, ultimately, by concealing African American disadvantage from public view.

Learn more about Invisible Men, or browse through its charts on incarceration in America.