Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
About this publication
Was America's racial divide built on a lie? In her new book, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America, Sarah Lewis, founder of Vision & Justice, uncovers the pivotal moment when Americans came to ignore the truth about the false foundations of the nation’s racial regime. The surprising catalyst occurred in the nineteenth century when the Caucasian War—the fight for independence in the Caucasus that coincided with the end of the U.S. Civil War—revealed the instability of the entire regime of racial domination. In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history.
"The Reckless Creation of Whiteness," by Erin L. Thompson, The Nation
“The Best Black History Books of 2024,” Black Perspectives
“10 Best Books of 2024,” Chicago Tribune
“The 30 Best Art Books of 2024,” Hyperallergic
“Sarah Lewis’s New Book Shows How Photography Taught Americans to “See” Race,” by Emmanuel Iduma, Art in America
“18 Art Books to Read This Fall," Hyperallergic
“The 60 Must-Read Books of Fall 2024,” Town & Country Magazine
“‘We can love all of the United Stated without lying about it,’ says Harvard professor Sarah Lewis,” by Brooke Hauser, The Boston Globe
“Learning not to see,” The Ink
“Suzanne Nossel Is Heartened by ‘Liberalism as a Way of Life,'” The New York Times
“The Next Big Idea Club’s September 2024 Must-Read Books,” Next Big Idea Club
The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images, Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, and Leigh Raiford, eds., New York: Aperture and The New York Times, 2024.
Coreen Simpson: A Monograph, Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, and Leigh Raiford, eds., New York: Aperture, 2025.