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We Were Eight Years in Power

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We Were Eight Years in Power

By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by: Beresford Bennett
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About this listen

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates, read by Beresford Bennett.

From 2008-2016, the leader of the free world was a black man. Obama's presidency reshaped America and transformed the international conversation around politics, race, equality. But it attracted criticism and bred discontent as much as it inspired hope - so much so, that the world now faces an uncertain future under a very different kind of US President.

In this essential new book, peerless journalist and thinker Ta-Nehisi Coates takes stock of the Obama era, speaking authoritatively from political, ideological and cultural perspectives, and drawing a sophisticated and penetrating portrait of America today.

 Americas Politics & Government Social Policy United States Social justice Equality Civil rights Socialism Human Rights Capitalism

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Critic reviews

I've been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates
America's latest literary wunderkind... A prodigious talent
We are witnessing greatness. The man and his writing will be studied and revered for generations
[Coates is] the pre-eminent black public intellectual of his generation
We Were Eight Years in Power is an essential text to understand America today
Ta-Nehisi Coates is probably the only magazine writer in the world whose articles are heralded with the same fervor as the release of the latest Beyonce album
A wake up call... More compelling than almost any other public voice about the state we're in. He eloquently conflates the personal, political and existential, while telling it like it is
Coates eloquently unfurls blunt truths... To have such a voice, in such a moment, is a ray of light
Coates succeeds twice over, in justifying not only his account of one election, but the importance of his entire body of work
Brilliant and troubling... Required reading
All stars
Most relevant
The simplest way to describe “We Were Eight Years in Power” is as a selection of Ta-Nehisi Coates' most influential pieces from The Atlantic, organised chronologically. The book is actually far more than that, establishing Coates as the pre-eminent black public intellectual of his generation.

Coates is one of the first to show up to discuss all three contemporary themes: the man, the community, national identity. He critiques respectability politics. He writes about mass incarceration. He writes about Michelle Obama and Chicago's South Side. He writes about how Barack Obama was exceptional, in many senses, and about the paradoxical limits of the first black president's power to address race and racism. He writes about the qualitative difference between white economic prospects and black economic prospects, thanks to discriminatory policies promulgated by the government even during progressive times, and about how, in his view, reparations would be the only way to redress the problem.

An air of resignation begins to bleed into Coates' writing even before his last essay, coming into the final years of the Obama administration. It is an eloquent eulogy to the struggles that African Americans are facing and increasingly fearing today.

An honest look at the Obama years

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Superb book and in light of the blm protests in June 2020 it's the right time to remind oneself how the odds are stacked (and have been stacked) against African Americans!!

Sheer brilliance

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Ta-Nehisi Coates is a brilliant writer and speaker, one of the best writer and thinkers of our time on race and politics.

His most recent book The Water Dancer at the time of writing this review is another master piece

Brilliant and well written

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