Ta-Nehisi Coates

A portrait of the historic Barack Obama era features essays originally published in "The Atlantic, " including "Fear of a Black President" and "The Case for Reparations, " as well as new essays revisiting each year of the Obama administration.

An American Tragedy

We Were Eight Years in Power

Laurel S.

Should Joe Biden run for president, he has to be asked about his time spent cheerleading for more prisons. Some of the quotes Murakawa unearths —particularly the ones where Democrats know the bill is bad and vote anyway— are little more than cowardice and put the lie to the notion that mass incarceration is a well-intentioned mistake. 

I am, like many liberals, horrified by Obama's embrace of a secretive drone policy, and particularly the killing of American citizens without any restraints. A president aware of black America's tenuous hold on citizenship, of how the government has at times secretly conspired against its advancement a black president with a broad sense of the world should know better. Except a black president with Obama's past is the perfect target for right-wing attacks depicting him as weak on terrorism. The president's inability to speak candidly on race cannot be bracketed off from his inability to speak candidly on everything. Race is not simply a portion ot the Obama story. It is the lens through which many Americans view all his politics.

Joshua Edward Gibson-Altrock

Cindy

Monique Baham

This is quite a book! Ta-Nehisi Coates is a talented writer and a thoughtful intellectual. His insights and opinions are firmly based in a deep knowledge of his subject, gained from thorough research. The book offers hard truths and can be painful to read especially to those still smarting from the 2016 election. His use of the term “An American Tragedy” is not hyperbole. Reading this book taught me that I’d been married to ideas about America and its history that were never based in fact. It also inspired me to use my life to help bring real solutions to the problems of racism and misogyny.

Alexandra Sklar

Excellent. Fascinating to see how his personal framing of Obama shifted, and how he documents his own learnings and transformations in that context.

One of the best written books I’ve read in my young life. This is a bible of thought for those who understand the the history of America as a great tragedy.

Lydia Enge

Sahi K

When I read the author’s award winning book Between the World and Me, I was completely blown away. And I knew I would have to checkout his other books as well. This one came from the library at an opportune time, I was kind of in a slump and was definitely looking for a nonfiction and I’m glad I picked this up. And all I can say is I’m extremely unqualified to write a review for this one. 

I didn’t know that this book was a compilation of eight of his essays from the eight years of the Obama presidency. And while I feared that that might make them a bit dated, and maybe a few points in them were, the author also gives a detailed explanation before each essay about his own personal journey during the time of the writing, the decisions he took during the process and is always self-critical about everything that he may have missed or misjudged. This lends so much more context and meaning to the articles themselves, and I loved getting to know both the author and his writings. 

While each of the eight articles are important in their own right, my interest in them varied depending on how much I was aware of the topics beforehand or even in the way they were written. The piece on mass incarceration was one I had already read before but it’s worth a read again and holds a mirror to the kind of punitive and discriminatory society we live in. His various impressions of President Obama, the joy of seeing the first black president but also being critical of his policies and grappling with these dual emotions, and then not being entirely surprised by the backlash he received which culminated in the disaster that was 2016 - these were fascinating, emotional and even painful to read about, especially his epilogue about the current president and the way white supremacy is the undeniable core of this democracy. 

But the two articles that really captured my mind were the one about Civil War and the other about reparations. They both showcase the systemic oppression from slavery to present day incarceration, interspersed in the middle with the civil war, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining and various other policies that have kept black oppression in place - and how the country, the politicians and its policies have striven to erase the people of their collective memory of the atrocity of it all and use platitudes to absolve themselves of the generational trauma caused upon millions of people which lasts till today. And the author rightly asserts that until the country, and particularly its white citizens reflect honestly and accept the truth about their past, there really can’t be an effective way forward towards inclusion and healing. 

In the end, you might be wondering why my so called review is so disjointed and incoherent, but it’s just that the scope of ideas the author talked about in this book are vast and very important and I just don’t think I have the right vocabulary or understanding to talk about them. But this has really taught me a lot, and also made me want to read in depth about the subjects. Hope you will too.

TA-NEHISI. COATES

WE WERE EIGHT YEARS IN POWER

Rose Stanley

Hard going at times (emotionally and just generally, particularly the essays for the sixth and seventh years, which were both very dense) but so worth it - important subjects and great writing. Highly recommend!

Daryl Houston

I hadn't known what to expect when I picked this one up; I just knew I wanted to read Coates's next book. To say that I liked it is problematic, because I don't like that the essays in it had cause to be written or collected. But I did like it. The book is composed of eight essays -- one per year of Obama's presidency written during that period -- and a substantial introduction to each, plus an epilogue. It's neat to see Coates develop as a writer over that time. His material is important and his prose powerful. This one's a must-read if you're interested in or affected by problems of race in America.

Shreerag Plakazhi

I think I quite safely say that if I were to read Baldwin, Zadie Smith, Emerson, or any of a score of other essayists, it is solely down to Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me. The book was effortlessly powerful, and surreal in its honesty.

This book is remarkably close to that experience. Where Coates excels is in formulating an argument rooted in passion but fueled by logic. His pieces are meticulous in their research, factual but deeply personal at the same time. He has lived every word he writes, articulates them with such talent you are left in awe. Ta-Nehisi is one of my favourite writers alive today, and this collection of his articles from the Atlantic stand as a testament to why he is highly regarded.

Heather Ellis

“The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world.” —— We Were Eight Years in Power
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Ta-Nehisi Coates’s brilliant essay collection is a unflinching examination of race in America, how it manifested during Obama’s presidency, and how America became home to who Coates describes as the “first white president” — Trump. Eight previously published essays form the backbone of this book. The essays are woven together with autobiographical and contextual introductions at the beginning of each essay
The prose in this book is both poetic and philosophical in nature. I enjoyed physically seeing Coates’ authorial voice grow in each essay. The first four essays are shorter in length and take up about a third of the book. My favourite from this section was “American Girl,” which looked at Michelle Obama’s South Side family history.

“The Case for Reparations” is the best essay in the collection (imo). I would highly recommend this essay to anyone who is studying American history, social work, sociology, psychology, anything in the humanities. You need to read this essay. Here, Coates discusses slavery, Jim Crow, red lining, the New Deal, the GI Bill, explicit and implicit segregation, and the American myth that their democratic experiment succeeded. This essay is his magnum opus in the book.

Other notable mentions are “Fear of a Black President” and “The Black Family in the Age of Incarceration.” I would highly recommend this book if you want some answers on how Trump was elected, and the legacy of racial inequality in the US.

Some readers on Goodreads critique Coates for repeating arguments or themes throughout the essays. That’s what intellectuals do. The repetitive statements and themes reinforced his arguments. For me, it felt like they all tied together into one single and powerful statement.

Caitlin Berger

Wow.
YOU MUST READ THIS. 
Will provide a lengthier review on my blog (link in bio!).

nono reads

David Furnes

Abhishek Damania

Eric Smith

Hannah Swithinbank

Kyle Curry

logan chung

Abhimat Gautam

Amanda

Siddharth Ramakrishnan

Keven Wang

In these "urgently relevant essays,"* 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 and 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. "Essential . . . Coates's probing essays about race, politics, and history became necessary ballast for this nation's gravity-defying moment."--The Boston Globe

We Were Eight Years in Power An American Tragedy

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