Professor Reed's research interests include American and Afro-American politics and political thought; urban politics, and American political development.
Recent publications include:
- ''Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals," in Harper's Magazine. (link)
- An exchange concerning the American left in The American Prospect with Bill Meyerson (Meyerson: link) (Reed response: link).
- An interview with Bill Moyers on "The Surrender of American liberals." (link)
- A podcast interview with Dissent Magazine's "Belabored". (link)
- Race and 20th-Century American Political Social Thought
- Power, Culture, and American Cities
- Labor and the Left in Postwar American Politics
Renewing Black Intellectual History: The Ideological and Material Foundations of African American Thought (with Kenneth W. Warren, et al, Paradigm Press, 2010)
Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and the Retreat from Racial Equality (editor, Westview Press, 2001)
(Buy this book online)
Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (The New Press, 2000)
(Buy this book from the publisher)
Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era (University of Minnesota Press, 1999)
(Buy this book from the publisher)
W.E.B. Dubois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (Oxford University Press, 1997)
(Buy this book from the publisher)
The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics (Yale University Press, 1986)
Race, Politics, and Culture: Critical Essays on the Radicalism of the 1960s (editor) (Greenwood Press, 1986)