There are times when you read a book at precisely the right time. This book is a mix of memoir and collection of essays. Set over the Obama presidency, Coates selected eight of his articles, one for each year, that represents issues surrounding race and how Obama casts light (and shadow) on them, with an Epilogue in the form of an article about Trump, the "First White President".

The book begins "as all writing must" in failure, unemployed and down on his luck. This is the first of eight Notes of where he was in life between writing the various pieces. While his articles are fluid and engaging, where this book soars are in the personal medidations between them. The one thing I love about Coates is the fluidity of his writing, how easily he can put down complicated ideas it would take me four or five times the amount of time to put down, things like the complexities of race and bundling that up with being a black writer, or Obama embodying that common adage of blackness: to gain respect one must be twice as good, but half as black.

He is at his best when he intermingles the reporting and the essay. He admitted it himself about "The Case For Reparations" and achieves it to a lesser extent with "My President Was Black" (again, at his admittance), easily his two strongest articles, but I was fond of them all, like the profile of Michelle Obama.

As you can expect, the difficulties surrounding attitudes about race are upsetting and genuinely surprising. Coates is a cool and even hand but his anger is unmistakable. The salient issue that runs through this book is that America has a race issue but it's not prepared to even acknowledge it, let alone deal with it. The only way it can improve is if it does. That is the seed of hope after all the horror inside. That it can get better. But we cannot wait. To quote Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about. Excuses won't cut it any longer.