The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America - Paperback

by Paul M. Barrett (Author)

Larry Mungin spent his life preparing to succeed in the white world. He looked away from racial inequality and hostility, believing he'd make it if he worked hard and played by the rules. He rose from a Queens housing project to Harvard Law School, and went on to practice law at major corporate firms. But just at the point when he thought he'd make it, when he should have been considered for partnership, he sued his employer for racial discrimination. The firm claimed it went out of its way to help Larry because of his race, while Larry thought he'd been treated unfairly. Was Larry a victim of racial discrimination, or just another victim of the typical dog-eat-dog corporate law culture? A thought-provoking courtroom drama with the fast pace of a commercial novel, The Good Black asks readers to rethink their ideas about race and is a fascinating look at the inner workings of the legal profession.

Back Jacket

In this eloquent and suspenseful work of nonfiction, Paul M. Barrett goes into the minefields of corporate America and inside our legal system to tell the story of one man's journey across racial lines.

Taught to believe that he was "a human being first, an American second, and a black third", Larry Mungin grew up with the credo that if you played by the rules, you'd succeed. His pursuit of the American Dream took him from a Queens housing project to Harvard Law School to the Washington, D.C., office of Katten Muchin & Zavis, a blue-chip Chicago law firm, where he worked toward achieving a coveted partnership.

It didn't happen. In the fall of 1994, brushed off by senior partners who weren't even considering him for partnership, Mungin hired an upstart black firm to sue his employer. Katten Muchin & Zavis retaliated by mounting the best defense money could buy. The jury's verdict made headlines from coast to coast; the final ruling on appeal was even more startling.

Was Mungin a victim of racial discrimination, business-as-usual mismanagement, or changes in the legal marketplace? At once a gripping courtroom drama and an intimate account of the forces that drove one man to risk everything for his ideals, The Good Black challenges us to make up our own minds and to see in Larry Mungin's story the deeper, far-reaching implications of racial discrimination in our time.

Author Biography

Paul M. Barrett is an assistant managing editor and senior writer at Businessweek. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Glock: The Rise of America's Gun, American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, and The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America. Barrett lives and works in New York City.