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continue, for better or worse, in the generations ahead. Even within a given country, such as the United States, that influence has been exercised in diametrically opposite directions at different times, promoting racial segregation and eugenics in the early twentieth century, and then civil rights and affirmative action in the later decades of that century. In other countries and in different eras, intergroup differences have led to even more varied and extreme consequences, including outright civil war and mass murder.
    Such issues and patterns will be explored in the chapters that follow. Most, but not all, of these chapters first appeared in a special section on race that was added to the revised edition of a much larger and more sweeping study, Intellectuals and Society . Here I have belatedly taken the advice of my research assistant Na Liu, and published these chapters in a separate book for those who wish to focus on racial issues, rather than take on the larger and more time-consuming task of traveling on a more sweeping journey across the landscape of intellectuals’ influences on issues ranging from economics to law to war and peace.
    New chapters have been added to this book, including the last chapter exploring current trends, in hopes of discerning their implications for the future. The chapters that precede this effort to foresee what lies ahead should tell us enough about what has already happened to make it obvious how large are the stakes and how difficult the choices facing this generation and those that will follow. If this book succeeds in simply demonstrating through its facts and analysis how inadequate, and even dangerous, the currently fashionable assumptions and catch phrases about race are, it will have achieved its purpose.