From the moment that Trayvon Martin’s senseless murder initiated the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, America has been convulsed by new social movements—around guns, gender violence, sexual harassment, race, policing, and on and on—and an equally powerful backlash that abetted the rise of the MAGA movement. In this collection of dispatches, mostly published in The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb pulls the signal from the noise of this chaotic era.
A gripping anthology ... Given the grim and overwhelming nature of his subject, Cobb is unfailingly modest about his insight and the power of his work to effect change. But that modesty belies the fact that Cobb’s writing makes us feel the injustice deeply ... Represents Cobb’s evolution as a thinker and reporter across a decade and a half, but it is foremost a stirring catalog of institutions lost, of other lives cut short ... Rich and satisfying.
