by Wesley Lowery (Author)NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year • Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowery confronts the sickness at the heart of American society: the cyclical pattern of violence that has marred every moment of racial progress in this country, and whose bloodshed began anew following Obama's 2008 election. “Wesley Lowery chronicles the most existential racial story of our time: the racist political violence that followed Obama’s election, fueled Trump’s rise, and continues to threaten our very existence. American Whitelash is indispensable. Really. It is.” Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist “American Whitelash offers a livid account of the hydra-like capacity of white-supremacist ideas not just to survive but to flourish.... It's an infuriating, radicalizing read…. A good primer on the unhealthy state of the nation as we enter election season.” - Washington Post Book World “The rise of white supremacist violence is one of the most important stories in American life today. In American Whitelash, Wesley Lowery guides the reader through the social, psychological, and historical realities that animate this violence. It is both a brilliant and unsettling examination of a part of America that many Americans would prefer to look away from. This book reminds us that we cannot look away. American Whitelash is an essential text, one that further demonstrates why Lowery is one of our country’s most important and gifted journalists.” - Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed In 2008, Barack Obama's historic victory was heralded as a turning point for the country. And so it would be--just not in the way that most Americans hoped. The election of the nation's first Black president fanned long-burning embers of white supremacy, igniting a new and frightening phase in a historical American cycle of racial progress and white backlash. In American Whitelash, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author Wesley Lowery charts the return of this blood-stained trend, showing how the forces of white power retaliated against Obama's victory--and both profited from, and helped to propel, the rise of Donald Trump. Interweaving deep historical analysis with gripping firsthand reporting on both victims and perpetrators of violence, Lowery uncovers how this vicious cycle is carrying us into ever more perilous territory, how the federal government has failed to intervene, and how we still might find a route of escape. Author Biography WESLEY LOWERY is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a national correspondent for CBS News and 60 Minutes. Previously, he was a national correspondent for the Washington Post and the paper's lead reporter covering race, justice, law enforcement, and the Black Lives Matter protest movement. He lives in the Washington, DC, area.