We Were Eight Years in Power

As impressive and conversation-changing as Coates's last book, Between the World and Me, was, it felt like part of a larger project, incomplete without his earlier memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, and his ongoing reporting in the Atlantic. His new book collects those Atlantic articles, many of which were publishing events of their own (especially the centerpiece, "The Case for Reparations," which builds the case for the "plunder" Coates alludes to in Between the World and Me), and he knits them together with autobiographical reflections that include some of the fiercest writing in the book. Coates traces the rise and fall of hope in Obama's eight years, and his pride and reluctance in his own rise as one of our country's most influential thinkers. It's a complicated, larger book, full of changes of mind and grim conclusions, and it might be his best yet.