The Weakest Link

The latest issue (#21) of Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies is now available online. It is a special issue devoted to the 25th anniversary of the publication of George Fredrickson's seminal 1981 book White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History. The contributors, with one notable exception, include scholarly giants: Fredrickson, the University of Cape Town's Chris Saunders, Yale's Howard Lamar, the University of the Witwatersrand's Ran Greenstein, Lewis Baldwin of Vanderbilt, a brief introduction by Safundi editor Andrew Offenburger, and a contribution that fits into the category "which of these figures does not merit inclusion with the others?", my own essay "The Comparative Imagination: George Fredrickson and New Directions in Comparative and Transnational History." George Fredrickson is arguably the premier comparativist alive today and is one of our finest practicing historians. I just hope this issue, and my essay, does justice to his contributions to the field and the profession.