Dorothea Lange, Impounded

A new book of Dorothea Lange's photographs of Japanese-American internment camps during WWII has been published, under the title of Impounded. The images were drawn from a trove of nearly 800 photos "unearthed in the National Archives, where they had lain neglected for a half-century after having been impounded by the government."

"They tell us that conditions in the camps were much worse than most people think," said Linda Gordon, a historian at New York University who edited the book with Gary Y. Okihiro, a historian at Columbia University. Both also contributed essays.

Lange’s work unflinchingly illustrates the reality of life during this extraordinary moment in American history when about 110,000 people were moved with their families, sometimes at gunpoint, into horse stalls and tar-paper shacks where they endured brutal heat and bitter cold, filth, dust and open sewers.

Sounds like a much-needed reminder of one of the most shameful government actions in American history.

And lest you think that such a thing is just a dusty piece of arcane history, that unwarranted detention of American citizens and xenophobic hysteria are things of the distant past, I direct your attention to Guantanamo, the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Bill. The groundwork is firmly in place for all of that to happen again.