This is more than a curation of Coates’s articles. Before each of the 8 (published during a year of the Obama administration—8 years in power is a phrase from a reconstruction era elected official) he writes a memoir reflecting on the piece, like his state of mind at the time or what he would write differently. These are original memoir style introductions. All are thoughtful and add a lot of depth to the original pieces. The curation is also valuable and better than reading the articles individually. Some of his famous essays are in here, and some I hadn’t read. The quality of writing and substance and longitudinal context of everything written of is, of course, great.