America, U.S.A.
How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries
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America, U.S.A.
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About this listen
Celebrated public intellectual Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. presents a groundbreaking analysis of the vicious cycles of American history and the country’s enduring refusal to face its true nature—especially at the moments when national anniversaries steer us back toward the mythology meant to disguise the truth.
America, U.S.A., deliberately formulated and beautifully written, details a heart-wrenching exploration of America’s legacy. It is a magnificently complex combination of lessons and voices—from W.E.B. DuBois and John Dos Passos to Herman Melville and Martin Luther King, Jr.—that, together, paint a sprawling and honest tableau of the United States, its complicated past, and ever more tenuous future. Glaude’s is a powerful voice of conscience in our tumultuous world. He pulls no punches, calling on us to interrogate our conceptions of innocence and freedom and the stories we tell ourselves about our past and present.
Centered around the major celebrations of America’s milestone birthdays across 250 years of history, the book offers a riveting look at the battles over who has a stake in writing the American story. Devastatingly candid, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective, America, U.S.A. is a shining meditation on how we must reckon with a grim past in order to strive for the better angels of our future.
Critic reviews
“America, U.S.A. is a bracing and elegant analysis of the contradiction at the heart of the American experiment: a country that claims to be committed to equality also adheres to white supremacy. Glaude opens a necessary conversation as we reflect on the meaning of our country’s 250th anniversary.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University, Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello
“With exquisite prose, stunning moral clarity, abundant heart and soul, and utter genius, yet again Eddie Glaude proves why he is so often referred to as the conscience of the nation. In the tradition of W.E.B. Dubois’ classic, The Souls of Black Folk, America, U.S.A. marks the 250th anniversary of the nation, yet it does so much more. It makes the stakes of America’s complex, anguished, and beautiful story clear as a bell. It will be read for generations to come.”—Imani Perry, Harvard University, National Book Award–winning author of South to America
“Commemorations held every fifty years since the nation’s founding in 1776—1876, 1926, 1976—have seen both jubilation and lamentation, stark, fleeting moments in time characterized by everything from sentimental kitsch to anguished protest, as Eddie S. Glaude recounts in this elegant and ardently argued new book. Writing in the tradition of Douglass, DuBois, Ellison, and Baldwin—themselves keen observers of earlier anniversaries—Glaude at once anticipates and rues the tumult of 2026, in a divided America whose reckoning with race and history remains woefully unfinished.”—Jill Lepore, Harvard University, New York Times bestselling author of This America
“Eddie Glaude banishes fantasy and sentimentalism from the 250th. At once a lyrical meditation on the meaning of race in America, a history of national commemorations, an extended essay laced with metaphors from Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Vincent Harding, Lonnie Bunch and others, this book is Glaude’s profoundly self-conscious, angry attempt to stave off the ‘madness’ of Trumpism and find the strength to love his country. This is a kinetic book that ignites turbulent conversations about history and memory and their many uses and abuses. Above all, Glaude provides a diagnosis of our current national shame, of our most bitter contradictions between promises and disappointments, and a vision of how real hope is born in a deep, transcendent sense of tragedy. Douglass’s ‘serpent’ still infests the nation’s heart, and we will fight with it all of our days. We are so fortunate to have Glaude as our brave guide.”—David W. Blight, Yale University, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
“With exquisite prose, stunning moral clarity, abundant heart and soul, and utter genius, yet again Eddie Glaude proves why he is so often referred to as the conscience of the nation. In the tradition of W.E.B. Dubois’ classic, The Souls of Black Folk, America, U.S.A. marks the 250th anniversary of the nation, yet it does so much more. It makes the stakes of America’s complex, anguished, and beautiful story clear as a bell. It will be read for generations to come.”—Imani Perry, Harvard University, National Book Award–winning author of South to America
“Commemorations held every fifty years since the nation’s founding in 1776—1876, 1926, 1976—have seen both jubilation and lamentation, stark, fleeting moments in time characterized by everything from sentimental kitsch to anguished protest, as Eddie S. Glaude recounts in this elegant and ardently argued new book. Writing in the tradition of Douglass, DuBois, Ellison, and Baldwin—themselves keen observers of earlier anniversaries—Glaude at once anticipates and rues the tumult of 2026, in a divided America whose reckoning with race and history remains woefully unfinished.”—Jill Lepore, Harvard University, New York Times bestselling author of This America
“Eddie Glaude banishes fantasy and sentimentalism from the 250th. At once a lyrical meditation on the meaning of race in America, a history of national commemorations, an extended essay laced with metaphors from Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Vincent Harding, Lonnie Bunch and others, this book is Glaude’s profoundly self-conscious, angry attempt to stave off the ‘madness’ of Trumpism and find the strength to love his country. This is a kinetic book that ignites turbulent conversations about history and memory and their many uses and abuses. Above all, Glaude provides a diagnosis of our current national shame, of our most bitter contradictions between promises and disappointments, and a vision of how real hope is born in a deep, transcendent sense of tragedy. Douglass’s ‘serpent’ still infests the nation’s heart, and we will fight with it all of our days. We are so fortunate to have Glaude as our brave guide.”—David W. Blight, Yale University, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
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