The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America

Sarah Lewis's book The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America examines America from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of Jim Crow when the country\'s conception of race, and whiteness, was transforming. A finalist for the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, Lewis uncovers a pivotal era when Americans came to ignore the truth about the false foundations of the nation's racial regime. Thanks to Professor Lewis's historical detective work, what we see and what's left unseen shapes everything we believe about ourselves and other people - and how we can start changing the narrative about who counts and who belongs in America.\r\n\r\nSarah Lewis is an award-winning art historian, founder of Vision & Justice, and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is also the author of the bestseller The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, as well as the forthcoming book Vision & Justice.