The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama

Awards:   Commended for PROSE Award for Best Book in Biography & Autobiography 2022 (United States)
Author:   Claude A. Clegg, III
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN:  

9781421441887


Pages:   672
Publication Date:   07 December 2021
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama


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Awards

  • Commended for PROSE Award for Best Book in Biography & Autobiography 2022 (United States)

Overview

"The first sweeping, legacy-defining history of the entire Obama presidency. Finalist of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Biography & Autobiography by the Association of American Publishers In The Black President, the first interpretative, grand-narrative history of Barack Obama's presidency in its entirety, Claude A. Clegg III situates the former president in his dynamic, inspirational, yet contentious political context. He captures the America that made Obama's White House years possible, while insightfully rendering the America that resolutely resisted the idea of a Black chief executive, thus making conceivable the ascent of the most unlikely of his successors. In elucidating the Obama moment in American politics and culture, this book is also, at its core, a sweeping exploration of the Obama presidency's historical environment, impact, and meaning for African Americans—the tens of millions of people from every walk of life who collectively were his staunchest group of supporters and who most starkly experienced both the euphoric triumphs and dispiriting shortcomings of his years in office. In Obama's own words, his White House years were ""the best of times and worst of times"" for Black America. Clegg is vitally concerned with the veracity of this claim, along with how Obama engaged the aspirations, struggles, and disappointments of his most loyal constituency and how representative segments of Black America engaged, experienced, and interpreted his historic presidency. Clegg draws on an expansive archive of materials, including government records and reports, interviews, speeches, memoirs, and insider accounts, in order to examine Obama's complicated upbringing and early political ambitions, his delicate navigation of matters of race, the nature and impacts of his administration's policies and politics, the inspired but also carefully choreographed symbolism of his presidency (and Michelle Obama's role), and the spectrum of allies and enemies that he made along the way. The successes and the aspirations of the Obama era, Clegg argues, are explicitly connected to our current racist, toxic political discourse. Combining lively prose with a balanced, nonpartisan portrait of Obama's successes and failures, The Black President will be required reading not only for historians, politics junkies, and Obama fans but also for anyone seeking to understand America's contemporary struggles with inequality, prejudice, and fear."

Full Product Details

Author:   Claude A. Clegg, III
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 4.60cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   1.157kg
ISBN:  

9781421441887


ISBN 10:   1421441888
Pages:   672
Publication Date:   07 December 2021
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

"Preface Part I. A Chronic Restlessness 1. Wanderers and Dreamers 2. Joshua Rising 3. The Pendulum Swings Forward Part II. Hope and Change 4. Bamelot 5. President of the Entire United States 6. Dancing with the Caucus 7. Man on a Tightrope 8. Pitchforks, Daggers, and Carnival Barkers 9. Guess Who's Coming to Tea 10. Signifier in Chief 11. Renaissance Woman 12. The Blood of Africa 13. Demographics and Destinies Part III. The Best of Times, the Worst of Times 14. Bamelot 2.0 15. A Second Wind 16. ""If I Had a Son"" 17. The Measure of a President 18. The Pendulum Swings Back Epilogue"

Reviews

. . . a gracefully written, scrupulously balanced and quite satisfying account of what Obama meant for Black Americans. * The New York Times Book Review *


. . . a gracefully written, scrupulously balanced and quite satisfying account of what Obama meant for Black Americans. —The New York Times Book Review A brilliant book. —Dorothy V. Smith, M. Phil, PhD, Dillard University, African & Asian Studies Journal of The Netherlands A scholarly and well-written book that considers what the Obama presidency did for Black Americans. Professor Clegg describes very eloquently the glamour and hope of the Obama presidency while assessing the accomplishments and domestic failures beneath it. —Vince Cable, former Liberal Democrat leader 2017—2019 Clegg is a compelling writer with an understated wit. His account is comprehensive and judicious. —Daniel Geary, Trinity College Dublin, The Irish Times The Black President: Hope and fury in the age of Obama by Claude A. Clegg III is an impressive attempt to gauge how well the former president performed in that impossible job.... This thoughtful, even-handed, highly useful book looks at the entire span of the forty-fourth US presidency. —Clifford Thompson, The Times Literary Supplement


Author Information

Claude A. Clegg III is the Lyle V. Jones Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad and Troubled Ground: A Tale of Murder, Lynching, and Reckoning in the New South.

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