Brown : The Last Discovery of America

In his dazzling new memoir, Richard Rodriguez reflects on the color brown and the meaning of Hispanics to the life of America today. Rodriguez argues that America has been brown since its inception-since the moment the African and the European met within the Indian eye. But more than simply a book about race, Brown is about America in the broadest sense-a look at what our country is, full of surprising observations by a writer who is a marvelous stylist as well as a trenchant observer and thinker.

Richard Rodriguez is the author of Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation. He works as an editor at the Pacific News Service in San Francisco and is a contributing editor for Harper's magazine and the Sunday "Opinion" section of the Los Angeles Times. He also appears regularly as an essayist on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.