When I was asked to comment, I found myself reaching for Baldwin. Glaude says: “We thought the book spoke to the moment. 4 after George Floyd’s murder, it changed again, to June 30. The book is a topline history of 20th century racism, as lived through the pen of James Baldwin. Then the pandemic hit and Glaude’s publication date was moved to Aug. In Begin Again, he explores the lie through the thoughts of author James Baldwin, as keen an observer and interpreter of what amounts to the lie as anyone ever has been. That account - weaving biography, literary criticism and social criticism with a thread of memoir - was originally scheduled to come out on April 24. I needed to work through my own rage, my own despair, and offer an account of this moment.” There is a recovery of the Reagan era to make a parallel between Trump and Reagan that is often muted in our media discourse that is refreshing. In a phone interview, Glaude says: “I went back to my apartment and started writing furiously. In Begin Again, Eddie Glaude revisits some of the most penetrating and important work of James Baldwin to sort through our racially fraught present. Glaude describes the incident in the introduction to “Begin Again”: “One officer had his knee in the man’s back the others twisted his arms.” Within an hour of his arrival, he witnessed a horrific scene at a train station that changed the trajectory of his book: Four white policemen piled on top of a distraught Black man. Baldwin said the best way to think about America is not to be in America.” Hurricane Maria interfered with this plan, so Glaude headed to Heidelberg, Germany. Thomas, figuring: “If I’m going to write a book on Baldwin, I need to be out of the country. While on sabbatical from Princeton University, where he is a professor of African-American studies, Glaude rented an apartment in St. a timeless and spellbinding conversation between two brilliant writers.

A year went by and I hadn’t written a sentence.” Even if you don t agree with Glaude s interpretations. 5 on the hardcover nonfiction list, as an intellectual biography of James Baldwin: “But then I ran into this wall.

says he first envisioned “ Begin Again,” now at No.

Eddie glaude begin again review