We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

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We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
400 pages; One World
Following Coates's National Book Award–winning epistolary tour de force, Between the World and Me, comes this essay collection that grapples with the specter of "Good Negro Government"—upstanding, accomplished black leadership—and how such government plays out in a racist society. In pieces he wrote during the two terms of the previous administration, Coates argues that "the symbolic power of Barack Obama's presidency...assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy" and ignited a reactionary movement that gave rise to Trumpism. The author's intellectual fearlessness functions as a beacon.