News & Reviews

News

“Sets the standard for political storytelling”: Steve’s latest >

Steve’s latest project arrived just in time for the presidential election’s final phase. Serving as the editor, Steve worked with his Washington Post colleagues Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan to tell the definitive story of the Trump impeachment. Backed by fresh reporting and dozens of in-depth interviews, Trump on Trial: The Investigation, Impeachment, Acquittal and Aftermath illuminates the aims and motivations of the principal figures. The Kirkus reviewer said it “sets the standard for political storytelling with impeccable research and lively writing.”

At DC’s National Book Festival, a capacity crowd and a stirring discussion of “Race in America” >

Before a packed hall of more than 1,000, Steve and two other authors of new books, historian/PBS filmmaker Henry Louis Gates and U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel of South Carolina, talked about America’s history of racial injustice and its repercussions today, moderated by NPR’s Eric Deggans. “Race is our national conversation,” Steve told the crowd. “We’re either talking about it, or we’re avoiding talking about it.” Click here to watch, via C-SPAN’s Book TV.

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SEPARATE makes longlist for the 2019 Cundill History Prize >

The Cundill History Prize, an international award that “recognizes and rewards the best history writing in English,” chose Separate as one of 14 books for its 2019 longlist. The shortlist of eight will be named Sept. 19, followed by three finalists on Oct. 16. The winner of the $75,000 award will be announced at a gala dinner in Montreal on Nov. 14. The longlist can be seen here.

National Book Festival invites Steve to join “Race in America” panel on Aug. 31 >

At an evening session featuring a conversation with historian/filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. and U.S. Judge Richard Gergel of South Carolina, Steve will discuss Separate as part of the National Book Festival’s focus on “Understanding Our World.” Gates’s latest book is Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy and the Rise of Jim Crow. Gergel’s new book is Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring.

For an early preview of the Festival lineup, click here.

Reviews & Praise for Separate

Absorbing … Segregation is not one story but many. Luxenberg has written his with energy, elegance and a heart aching for a world without it.”
—James Goodman, The New York Times


“Luxenberg has chosen a fresh way to tell the story of Plessy. . . . Separate is deeply researched, and it wears its learning lightly. It’s a storytelling kind of book.”
Louis Menand, New Yorker


“A dazzlingly well-reported chronicle of an important period. . . . Luxenberg repeatedly manages to tell us stories that capture both the hope and hopelessness that has been central to America’s long argument about race. . . . An eye-opening journey through some of the darkest passages and haunting corridors of American history.”
Terence Samuel, NPR


“Luxenberg gives a three-dimensional and almost novelistic treatment to the players involved, drawing on diaries, letters and archival research.”
Joumana Khatib, The New York Times


“A masterly narrative. . . . In the sweeping style of Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, this work will be enthusiastically received by informed readers and historians and is likely to become the seminal work on this crucial Supreme Court decision.”
Library Journal, starred review


“… Luxenberg writes at the outset of his book that the story of Plessy is a reminder that ‘history is made, not ordained.’ In his moving portrait of the many figures who played a role in the case, he confirms that idea as well as another: that even the most hopeless fool’s errand can emerge, in time, as an unassailable triumph.”
Charles Dameron, Wall Street Journal


“Luxenberg’s richly detailed portrait of America’s most turbulent time reveals why the case was such a long shot. . . . Separate vividly tells the story of how far our country had to go to repudiate its commitments to a racial double standard.”
—David Cole, The Nation


“Luxenberg brilliantly tackles a difficult task, presenting his solidly researched work clearly and with a restrained objectivity. . . . An engaging and sensitive exploration of America’s detour from the promise of equal protection.”
Kirkus Reviews, starred review


“Luxenberg writes . . . as a storyteller, someone who can have you riveted to his tales for hours on end.
J. E. McNeil, Friends Journal


“[Luxenberg] is a fine writer who tells this story in an engaging manner. . . . Separate reminds us that our history is not simply a narrative of greater and greater freedom.”
Eric Foner, Washington Post


“In Separate, the context and aftermath of the court’s ruling in Plessy v Ferguson are woven into a nuanced history of America’s struggles in the 19th century as a civil war was fought, slavery ended and a new, complex racial politics haltingly took form . . . Like any good history, Separate introduces some puzzles while resolving others.”
The Economist


“I dipped into [Separate] one day and ended up devouring it. This is a masterful book.”
Chris Schuelp, editor at Amazon’s Omnivoracious


“Luxenberg has written an ambitious and deeply researched nonfiction account [that] draws on letters, diaries and archival collections to bring this true story to life.”
Suzanne Van Atten, Atlanta Journal Constitution


“In lucid prose, Luxenberg lays out the history of racialized segregation in the North and South of the United States and offers vivid portraits of main actors in this civil rights struggle.” Publishers Weekly

Celebrating in the halls of Congress after passage of the first Civil Rights Act, 1866 (Harper’s Weekly)
Celebrating in the halls of Congress after passage of the first Civil Rights Act, 1866 (Harper’s Weekly)

“A surprising, compelling, and brilliant milestone in understanding the history of race relations in America.”
Bob Woodward, author of Fear: Trump in the White House


Riveting and deeply researched, Separate tells the story surrounding one of the nation’s most devastating acts: drawing a sharp color line between black and white after the Civil War. The Plessy case was a knife that cleaved America, and Steve Luxenberg brilliantly reveals that divide with his rich narrative of admirable and flawed characters caught in the battle over racial justice. Every paragraph resonates in today’s headlines.”
Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs, and professor of history, Tulane University


“Forensically researched, deeply moving, devastatingly relevant.”
Katherine Boo, author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity


“A magisterial assessment of a U.S. Supreme Court’s grievous moral collapse, a definitive work on the 1896 legal drama that afflicts us to this day.”
David Simon, author, and creator of HBO’s The Wire


“This is a compulsively readable work of serious history, the absorbing and timely story of a disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decision, freshly told through the lives of those directly involved. Steve Luxenberg’s scholarship is deep and impressive; his writing even more so. This is history as it was lived, giving us a sense not only of the deep racism of the period, but the struggle of decent men and women to overcome it, in society and, most importantly, in themselves.”
Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968: A Turning Point in the American War in Vietnam


Plessy v. Ferguson has been something of a black hole in legal history. But that is about to change with the upcoming publication of a remarkable new book by Steve Luxenberg.”
Scott Campbell, archivist for Justice John Marshall Harlan’s papers at the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law


Plessy v. Ferguson looms large in American history, and it remains searingly relevant today, but it is ill understood. Steve Luxenberg uses his relentless reporting skills and narrative expertise to reveal the full story. His uniquely valuable book will appeal to fans of Ron Chernow’s Grant and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit—and to anyone who wants to understand how America’s current racial landscape came to be.”
Garrett Epps, professor of law, University of Baltimore, author of Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post–Civil War America


“At this critical moment in our nation’s struggle for racial justice, Steve Luxenberg’s Separate provides a compelling picture of an earlier stage in that quest. Unlike Gideon’s Trumpet  or Simple Justice, his story does not end with a judicial triumph. But in viewing Plessy v. Ferguson through the lives of its protagonists―the plaintiff, his sponsors, his lawyer, the Justices who decided the case―he reminds us that the pursuit of justice comes down to individuals, not just institutions. He has written a fascinating, if sobering volume.”
Peter M. Shane, professor of law, the Ohio State University


“. . . a work of impressive scope, depth and sensitivity . . .”
Harvey Freedenberg, bookreporter.com


“The reader’s delight is to follow Luxenberg as he intertwines [several] stories from widely singular strands at the beginning to their historical moments on the stage together in 1896 . . . [a] monumental work.”
Y.S. Fing, The Washington Independent Review of Books


“In documenting this country’s fateful journey from slavery through thwarted Reconstruction to segregation, Luxenberg paints on a broad canvas, elegantly narrating several captivating and scrupulously researched stories that converge in Plessy v. Ferguson.”
Steve Nathans-Kelly, The New York Journal of Books


“Steve Luxenberg’s interwoven narrative takes the story in a new direction, providing illuminating answers to fundamental questions. . . . A rich, complex, and all too human story, replete with ironies and unintended consequences. This is ‘big history,’ deeply researched and well-told.”
From the J. Anthony Lukas Award Citation