Like Children

Finalist, 2025 PROSE Awards: Literature A new history of manhood, race, and hierarchy in American childhood Like Children argues that the child has been the key figure giving measure and meaning to the human in thought and culture since the early American period. Camille Owens demonstrates that white men’s power at the top of humanism’s order has depended on those at the bottom. As Owens shows, it was childhood’s modern arc—from ignorance and dependence to reason and rights—that structured white