Daniel Brook – författare

More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld first argued that gender and sexuality were fluid. Dubbed “the Einstein of Sex,” Hirschfeld grew famous (and infamous) for his liberating theory of sexual relativity. Today, he’s been largely forgotten.Journalist Daniel Brook reinvigorates Hirschfeld’s legacy, recovering one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century. As an advocate for trans acceptance and the decriminalisation of homosexuality, Hirschfeld served as intellectual impresario to Weimar Berlin’s libertine cabaret culture. Driven from his homeland by fascists, he embarked on a global survey of human sexuality and witnessed the diversity of gay life, as well as the impacts of imperialism and racism firsthand. Hirschfeld spent his final years in exile, working to debunk Nazi race science and warn the world of the genocidal dangers of racism. Rich in passion and intellect, The Einstein of Sex at last brings together this unsung icon’s work on sexuality, gender, and race and recovers the globe-trotting visionary who first saw beyond the binaries.

In The Accident of Color, Daniel Brook journeys to nineteenth-century New Orleans and Charleston and introduces us to cosmopolitan residents who elude the racial categories the rest of America takes for granted. Before the Civil War, these free, openly mixed-race urbanites enjoyed some rights of citizenship and the privileges of wealth and social status. But after Emancipation, as former slaves move to assert their rights, the black-white binary that rules the rest of the nation begins to intrude. During Reconstruction, a movement arises as mixed-race elites make common cause with the formerly enslaved and allies at the fringes of whiteness in a bid to achieve political and social equality for all.In some areas, this coalition proved remarkably successful. Activists peacefully integrated the streetcars of Charleston and New Orleans for decades and, for a time, even the New Orleans public schools and the University of South Carolina were educating students of all backgrounds side by side. Tragically, the achievements of this movement were ultimately swept away by a violent political backlash and expunged from the history books, culminating in the Jim Crow laws that would legalise segregation for a half century and usher in the binary racial regime that rules us to this day.The Accident of Color revisits a crucial inflection point in American history. By returning to the birth of our nation’s singularly narrow racial system, which was forged in the crucible of opposition to civil rights, Brook illuminates the origins of the racial lies we live by.

Hailed as an “original and fascinating book” (Times Literary Supplement), A History of Future Cities is Daniel Brook’s captivating investigation of four “instant cities”—St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai—that sought to catapult themselves into the future by emulating the West.

Brutal slavery existed all over the New World, but only America followed emancipation with a twisted system of segregation. The Accident of Color asks why. Searching for answers, Daniel Brook journeys to the places that resisted Jim Crow the longest. In the cosmopolitan port cities of New Orleans and Charleston, integrated streetcars plied avenues patrolled by integrated police forces for decades after the Civil War. This progress was ushered in during Reconstruction when long-free, openly biracial communities joined in coalition with the formerly enslaved and allies at the fringes of whiteness. Tragically, their victories—including integrated schools—and their alliance itself were violently uprooted by segregation along a stark, new black-white color line. By revisiting a turning point in the construction of America’s uniquely restrictive racial system, The Accident of Color brings to life a moment from our past that illuminates the origins of the racial lies we live by.

Using a comparative historical methodology, this book analyzes the causal convergence of the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia from socio-cultural and political economic perspectives, and contrasts it with China's Tiananmen Square rebellion during same year. The key strategy in tracking the causal convergence is a measured emphasis on structures, agencies, cultures, and their interactions.