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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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STAKES IS HIGH

Mychal Denzel Smith

Life after the American Dream

Bold vision for how to move past crisis mode and build a country that lives up to its promise: of liberty, justice, and equality.
"We are better than this" has been the rallying cry since Donald Trump was elected. But as New York Times-bestselling author Mychal Denzel Smith shows, Americans are too comfortable imagining their greatness. But historically, we've only come close to living up to the ideals we profess after we've been dragged, kicking and screaming, toward justice. Growth only happens when we confront our deceptions and our own complicity in them.

In STAKES IS HIGH, Smith exposes the contradictions at the heart of American life - between patriotism and justice, between freedom and inequality, and incarceration and police violence. In a series of incisive essays, Smith holds us to account individually and as a nation. He examines his own shortcomings, grapples with the anxiety of feeling stuck, and looks in new directions for the tools to build a just America. He questions whether Martin Luther King, Jr. can ever really be the hero we need in our time, untangles the persistent cultural power of Bill Cosby, and weighs the value of police and prison abolition.

STAKES IS HIGH establishes Mychal Denzel Smith as a voice to be heeded as we prepare for the fight ahead.

Mychal Denzel Smith is the author of the New York Times bestseller Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, and a fellow at the Nation Institute. He has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, Complex, The Paris Review, Harper's, The New Republic, The Guardian, and The Root, and he has been a featured commentator on NPR, BBC radio, CNN, MSNBC, and HuffPost Live. He lives in Brooklyn.
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Published 2020-09-08 by Bold Type Books

Comments

Smith addresses familiar topics through a fresh lens in these searing essays ... Infused with righteous indignation and astute observation, this is a must-read progressive polemic.

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Stakes Is High will undoubtedly prove to be one of the most important works of the decade; as social critique, as personal essay, as a master class in language. Keep it within arm's length; you'll be reaching for it long after you've read the last line.

A short, very well-done call to arms and critique of the state of the nation. It's not pretty, but Smith's wide-lens view is smart and lays out the root of American problems succinctly, shining a light on endemic racism, toxic masculinity, capitalism, the justice system, politics, and the long-standing delusion labeled the American dream. Read more...

Slim, impactful... Stakes Is High is a polemic in the best sense of the word, holding up a mirror to America in the hope that a clear-eyed glimpse of its failings will assist in the never-ending struggle to bring about the righteous nation it has always aspired to be.

Stakes Is High ... provides a soulful, rigorous way out of the destruction. Mychal Denzel Smith is the rarest of tenacious writers who remind us that the only way into a dignified free future is backwards. And our refusal to go walk back together makes the stakes highest for the most vulnerable children of tomorrow.

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Stakes Is High is a passionate, urgent book, a personal account of a contemporary New York political education, and a call to confront the emergency with clarity and truthfulness about the history that brought us here.

A fresh, modern, thrilling call for humanity to come together as well as a brilliant investigation into what it means to be an American. Stakes Is High is required reading.

[Smith] is sharply self-aware, and he would seem to expect his reader to approach his fine-honed argument with the same seriousness. Doing so is well worth the effort. An urgent and provocative work that deserves the broadest possible audience.