New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates' ""Amazing Books"" of the Year One of Publishers Weekly's 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An Npr Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary PrizeThis ""powerful and disturbing history"" exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review). Widely heralded as a ""masterful"" (Washington Post) and ""essential"" (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law offers ""the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation"" (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation- with undisguised racial zoning, public housing that purposefully segregated.