APB Exclusive Speaker Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.’s Latest Best-selling Book Now Available in Paperback
09 Jul 2021
In these tumultuous times, when tough conversations about race and social justice are needed more than ever, APB Exclusive Speaker Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.’s latest book, now being released in paperback, takes a deep dive into these topics. Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own is a mix of biography, history and social criticism about the state of our country and race relations today. The chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University argues that we stand on the precipice of a decision about who we are as a country that will reverberate for decades.
Just as in Baldwin’s “after times,” argues Glaude, when white Americans met the civil rights movement’s call for truth and justice with blind rage and the murders of movement leaders, so in our moment were the Obama presidency and the birth of Black Lives Matter answered with the ascendance of Trump and the violent resurgence of white nationalism.
Within the pages, Glaude finds hope and guidance in Baldwin, an American writer and activist, as he mixes biography—drawn partially from newly uncovered Baldwin interviews—with history, memoir and poignant analysis of our current moment to reveal the painful cycle of black resistance and white retrenchment.
“We cannot stand pat where we currently are, or the political superstorms will tear us apart,” Glaude writes. “Either America will turn its back and embrace the value gap as Trumpism demands, or we will risk everything, finally, to become a truly multiracial democracy.”
Begin Again is precisely the book for these difficult days. It was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the Chicago Tribune and One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize and is the winner of the 2021 Stowe Prize.
Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. He is the former president of the American Academy of Religion, the largest professional organization of scholars of religion in the world. In addition to Begin Again, he is the author of a number of books, including Democracy in Black, which was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the most imaginative, daring books of the 21st century.”