About six weeks ago I got a call from a number in DC I didn’t recognize. I answered the phone warily, saying hello more as a question than a greeting. At the other end, I heard, “Professor Robin?” “Who’s this?” I asked. “It’s Nina Totenberg from NPR.” I started cracking up, almost uncontrollably, and finally said, hi, hi, of course, Nina Totenberg. She noted that I sounded “furtive.” I noted that I didn’t recognize the number.

Anyway, we wound up having a lovely chat about Clarence Thomas. Totenberg is as warm and friendly and personable on the phone as she is on air.

On Friday, a small bit of our conversation made it into the segment she did on Thomas in Morning Edition.

Here’s some other book-related news.

The first advance review of the Thomas book is in. It’s at Kirkus. They call it “a penetrating profile of the Supreme Court’s longest-serving justice.”

Here’s the full review:

Analyzing speeches, court opinions, and Thomas’ writings, Robin (Political Science/Brooklyn Coll. and CUNY Graduate Center; The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism From Edmund Burke to Donald Trump, 2017, etc.) argues persuasively that Thomas’ right-wing conservatism and black nationalism make him “the most extreme justice on the Supreme Court.” Thomas, writes the author, believes “that racism is permanent, the state is ineffective, and politics is feeble.” Noting that he rejects “virtually all of Thomas’s views,” Robin warns against dismissing them, and he presents them in detail along with critiques from other justices and analysts. Central to Thomas’ beliefs is the valorization of the black male provider and protector, “a figure of authority whose word is law for the women and children under his care.” Black men, “stolid, moral, responsible, authoritative, upstanding,” are essential to the black community. For Thomas, white racism and liberal politics combine to undermine black interests. Blacks, therefore, “should cease to look to electoral politics as a means of bettering their situation; any involvement in electoral politics will only confirm white power and reinforce black powerlessness.” Efforts such as affirmative action, for example, reinforce black powerlessness by failing to treat blacks and whites as equals, defining blacks as “inferior and deficient.” When Thomas considers the incarceration rate for blacks and liberals’ cry for judicial and prison reform, he counters that “the racist dimensions of the carceral state” actually benefit African Americans: Harsh policing protects black neighborhoods from crime, and stringent punishment fosters law-abiding behavior. Adversity—even slavery and society under Jim Crow—“helps the black community develop its inner virtue and resolve.” Acknowledging that we are all trapped “in the same historical moment” as Thomas, Robin asks readers to examine the premises underlying their own social and political views. Thomas’ “beliefs are disturbing, even ugly,” Robin acknowledges; “his style is brutal. I want to make us sit with that discomfort rather than swat it away.”

A penetrating profile of the Supreme Court’s longest-serving justice.

We’re lining up events in New York, DC, and elsewhere; I’m going to be in conversation with Jamelle Bouie, Rebecca Traister, and others.

For the political scientists among you, there’s going to be an author meets critics panel at APSA, with a great lineup of commentators that includes Dahlia Lithwick, Lawrie Balfour, Brandon Terry, Mark Tushnet, and Adrienne Davis, and is chaired by Jodi Dean.

I’ll have a fuller schedule of events, with dates and times and places, as the summer unfolds.

But for now, you can, um, pre-order the book!