allibroad 's review for:

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

5.0

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Coates is just so, so brilliant. I usually find the monicker of public intellectual silly, but he fits the bill. He has the rare ability to speak truth and knowledge to the masses. He can digest a tremendous amount of academic information (history and law and sociology and politics) and synthesize it into beautiful, devastating, accessible, didactic essays. The essays are organized chronologically, which allow us to track his progress and appreciate his experimentation as a writer. The writing get progressively better, culminating in two masterpieces.