Reviews
"Michael Eric Dyson... [is] a world-class scholar, and the most brilliant interpreter of hip hop culture we have... How many folk out there can talk about pimping in terms laid out by Hegel? Or use Kant to explain the way that prison fashion moved from the cellblock to the city block? Dyson drops the names of philosophers and scholar as easily as he does the names of artists on the latest mixtape moving dance floors in the clubs." -Jay Z"It's very hard to both tell the truth and do it with care, but Dyson has proved himself master of this high-wire act. He's an electrifying man of words - this is clear to anyone who has read him or heard him or seen him speak. Although he is entirely unafraid to walk into a rhetorical firefight, he is careful, he is considered, and he always seeks peaceful resolution to any debate, no matter how fraught." -Dave Eggers"Dyson is not only the most talented rhetorical acrobat in the academy-he is also one of the most courageous and engaged intellectuals in America." -Cornel West"Michael Eric Dyson embodies the ideal public intellectual for our time: translator, boundary-breaker, and healer of a war torn culture." -Naomi Wolf"Michael Eric Dyson combines cutting-edge theoretical acuity with the passionate, engaged, and accessible stance of a public intellectual" -Henry Louis Gates, Jr."Dyson's distinctive eloquence... As always, Dyson is fiercely honest, controversial, engaging, funny, and brimming with arguments and ideas." -Ann Coulter"Michael Eric Dyson offers a radical reinterpretation of Martin Luther King, Jr.: radical in its politics, radical in its style, and radical in implication." -George Stephanopoulos"My man Mike Dyson is not only a serious intellectual, but a hip brother who can identify with everyday people." -Nas"Effortlessly and with conviction, he weaves together a range of themes from gangsta rap to graduate seminars, deepening them with highly varied and vividly portrayed personal experience." -Noam Chomsky"Such is the genius of Dyson. He flows freely from the profound to the profane, from popular culture to classical literature."- -Washington Post"In [Dyson's] prose one hears the fervor of a Sunday sermon; in his ideas one see the analytic scrupulousness of a man who knows a thing or two about tenure committees." -Time"[O]ne of the most graceful and lucid intellectuals writing on race and politics today." -Vanity Fair, "Dyson succeeds admirably in creating a base line for future interpretations of this historic presidency. His well-written book thoroughly illuminates the challenges facing a black man elected to govern a society that is far from post-racial." --Kirkus, Starred Review "Michael Eric Dyson combines cutting-edge theoretical acuity with the passionate, engaged, and accessible stance of a public intellectual." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Immensely engaging, unflinchingly honest, and appropriately provocative, Michael Eric Dyson proves, once again, that he is without peer when it comes to contextualizing race in 21st-century America. The Black Presidency is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand America''s racial past, present, and future, as well as an urgent and vital contribution to any serious discussion of race in the waning moments and aftermath of Barack Obama''s time in office." -- Gilbert King , author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Devil in the Grove "Michael Eric Dyson meticulously captures the tension between the immense burden of expectation and record of achievement of the Obama presidency. His portrait of a legacy still in utero captivates with an uncanny prescience and sometimes-critical eye. The Black Presidency is at once scholarly and emotional; historically important and packed with the irony of the moment; mindful of past and present injustices but, like its subject, striving toward hope. Overall, The Black Presidency represents the great first step in contextualizing our most modern leader in the grand scheme of history." --Jesse Eisenberg, Academy Award-nominated actor and author of Bream Gives Me Hiccups "Prophetic and scholarly, profound and colloquial, luscious and rigorous, empathic and critical, tough and fair, this is Dyson in tip-top form, on the essential and enduring dilemma of our republic - and its expression by and upon the first black president. This book is enormously clarifying." --Diane McWhorter, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning Carry Me Home "Michael Eric Dyson''s account of Barack Obama and the politics of race is riveting. There have been a plethora of books on Obama''s presidency, but none creates a greater awareness of the burdens, challenges and possibilities he confronts in addressing the changing dynamics of our nation''s race relations. This illuminating, balanced, and well-written book is essential reading for citizens trying to understand the promises and pitfalls of America''s racial maze." --William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University "Michael Eric Dyson''s The Black Presidency is a brilliant and searing analysis of what it means to be African-American in the Age of Obama. Every page sizzles with owlish erudition, fearless thinking, and barely contained fury. When it comes to frankly discussing race and American identity Dyson is in a league of his own. Highly recommended!" --Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and CNN Presidential Historian "Michael Eric Dyson, as passionate and incisive as always, has written a provocative and important book on President Obama and his relationship with the black community. Whatever your views, it will help you understand the complex puzzle of race and how we can reach for a more just society." --Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute, author of Steve Jobs "In The Black Presidency , Michael Eric Dyson's surgical blade simultaneously lacerates Barack Obama's confounding clumsiness on race, and in the same razor-edged stroke, redeems the current president to a deserved place of permanent legend in American life. No one understands the American dilemma of race--and Barack Obama''s confounding and yet wondrous grappling with it--better than Michael Eric Dyson." --Douglas Blackmon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Slavery By Another Name
