Books by Danielle Allen

Age 15 and living in LA, Michael Allen was arrested for a botched carjacking. Falling victim to the recently conceived three-strikes law, he was tried as an adult and sentenced to thirteen years behind bars. After growing up in prison Michael was released age 26, only to be murdered 3 years later by his ex-convict transsexual lover.

In a shattering work that shifts between a woman's private anguish over the loss of her beloved baby cousin and a scholar's fierce critique of the American prison system, Danielle Allen seeks answers to what, for many years, felt unanswerable. Why? Why did her cousin, a precocious young man who dreamed of being a firefighter and a writer, end up dead? Why did he languish in prison? And why, at the age of fifteen, was he in an alley in South Central Los Angeles, holding a gun while trying to steal someone's car?Cuz means both "cousin" and "because." In this searing memoir, Allen unfurls a "new American story" about a world tragically transformed by the sudden availability of narcotics and the rise of street gangs-a collision, followed by a reactionary War on Drugs, that would devastate not only South Central L.A. but virtually every urban center in the nation. At thirteen, sensitive, talkative Michael Allen was suddenly tossed into this cauldron, a violent world where he would be tried at fifteen as an adult for an attempted carjacking, and where he would be sent, along with an entire generation, cascading into the spiral of the Los Angeles prison system.Throughout her cousin Michael's eleven years in prison, Danielle Allen-who became a dean at the University of Chicago at the age of thirty-two-remained psychically bonded to her self-appointed charge, visiting Michael in prison and corresponding with him regularly. When she finally welcomed her baby cousin home, she adopted the role of "cousin on duty," devotedly supporting Michael's fresh start while juggling the demands of her own academic career.As Cuz heartbreakingly reveals, even Allen's devotion, as unwavering as it was, could not save Michael from the brutal realities encountered by newly released young men navigating the streets of South Central. The corrosive entanglements of gang warfare, combined with a star-crossed love for a gorgeous woman driving a gold Mercedes, would ultimately be Michael's undoing.In this Ellisonian story of a young African American man's coming-of-age in late twentieth-century America, and of the family who will always love Michael, we learn how we lost an entire generation.

Does the ease with which one can now participate in online petitions or conversations about current events seduce some away from civic activities into "slacktivism?" Drawing on a diverse body of theory, from Hannah Arendt to Anthony Appiah, this book offers a range of visions for a political ethics to guide citizens in a digitally connected world.

Includes contributors that explores how the institutions and practices of education can support democracy, by creating the conditions for equal citizenship and egalitarian empowerment, and how they can advance justice, by securing social mobility and cultivating the talents and interests of every individual.

The author of The World of Prometheus argues that the transition to political friendship offered by the Brown v. Board of Education decision has not been completed, and proposes practical techniques of bridging citizenship and trust thorugh sacrifice.