We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy Paperback – October 30, 2018 by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Description

Author: Coates Ta-Nehisi

Brand: One World

Color: White

Edition: Reprint

Package Dimensions: 24x200x299

Number Of Pages: 400

Release Date: 30-10-2018

Details: Product Description
In this “urgently relevant”* collection featuring the landmark essay “The Case for Reparations,” the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*—including the election of Donald Trump. New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times • USA Today • Time • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Essence • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Week • Kirkus Reviews *Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.”

But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.

We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in
The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era.
We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.
Review
“A master class . . . Anyone who wants to know who we are—and where we are now—must sit with [Ta-Nehisi Coates] for a good while. . . . It should inspire us as writers, and as Americans, that he urges us . . . to become better—or at least clearer on why we’re not.”
—Kevin Young, The New York Times Book Review

“Ta-Nehisi Coates has published a collection of the major magazine essays he wrote throughout the Obama years. . . . But Coates adds an unexpected element that renders
We Were Eight Years in Power both new and revealing. Interspersed among the essays are introductory personal reflections. . . . Together, these introspections are the inside story of a writer at work, with all the fears, insecurities, influences, insights and blind spots that the craft demands. . . . I would have continued reading Coates during a Hillary Clinton administration, hoping in particular that he’d finally write the great Civil War history already scattered throughout his work. Yet reading him now feels more urgent, with the bar set higher.”
—Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post

“Coates . . . eloquently unfurls blunt truths. . . . Such a voice, in such a moment, is a ray of light.”
—USA Today
“There is a fresh clarity to [Coates’s] voice—urgent, outraged, electric—that’s never felt more necessary.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Indispensable . . . bracing . . . compelling . . . A new book from Coates is not merely a literary event. It’s a launch from Cape Canaveral.”
—Jennifer Senior, The New York Times

“Essential . . . Coates’s probing essays about race, politics, and history became necessary ballast for this nation’s gravity-defying moment.”
—The Bos