Nobody, Marc Lamont Hill
Nobody, Marc Lamont Hill
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Nobody
Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond

Author: Marc Lamont Hill, Todd Brewster

Narrator: Kevin Kenerly

Unabridged: 6 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/02/2017


Synopsis

Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and across the United States following the death of Michael Brown revealed something far deeper than a passionate display of age-old racial frustrations; they unveiled a public chasm that has been growing for years, as America has consistently and intentionally denied significant segments of its population access to full freedom and prosperity.In Nobody, scholar and journalist Marc Lamont Hill presents a powerful and thought-provoking analysis of race and class by examining a growing crisis in America: the existence of a group of citizens who are made vulnerable, exploitable, and disposable through the machinery of unregulated capitalism, public policy, and social practice. These are the people considered “Nobody” in contemporary America. Through on-the-ground reporting and careful research, Hill shows how this Nobody class has emerged over time and how forces in America have worked to preserve and exploit it in ways that are both humiliating and harmful.To make his case, Hill carefully reconsiders the details of tragic events like the deaths of Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and Freddie Gray, and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. He delves deeply into a host of alarming trends including mass incarceration, overly aggressive policing, broken court systems, shrinking job markets, and the privatization of public resources, showing time and time again the ways the current system is designed to worsen the plight of the vulnerable.Timely and eloquent, Nobody is a keen observation of the challenges and contradictions of American democracy, a must-read for anyone wanting to better understand the race and class issues that continue to leave their mark on our country today.

About Marc Lamont Hill

Marc Lamont Hill is an award-winning journalist and host of BET News, as well as a political contributor to CNN. He is a Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Morehouse College. Prior to that, he held positions at Columbia University and Temple University. He lives in Atlanta and New York City.

About Todd Brewster

Todd Brewster is an American author, journalist, and film producer. He has served as Don E. Ackerman director of oral history at the United States Military Academy, West Point, and is a longtime journalist who has worked as an editor for TimeLife, and as senior producer for ABC News. He has written for Vanity Fair, Time, Life, the Huffington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times, and is coauthor, with the late Peter Jennings, of the bestselling books The Century, The Century for Young People, and In Search of America. He lives with his wife and two sons in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

About Kevin Kenerly

Kevin Kenerly, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, earned a BA at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in more than twenty seasons, playing dozens of roles.


Reviews

Goodreads review by marta the book slayer on May 26, 2021

"The stories of Ferguson, Baltimore, Flint, and countless other sites of gross injustice remind us of what it means to be largely erased from the social contract. They expose life on the underside of American democracy, where countless citizens are rendered disposable through economic arrangements,......more

Goodreads review by Traci on September 06, 2020

A well executed overview of the ways state violence is perpetuated against America’s Black citizens. Hill uses infamous murders of Black people as catalysts for his historical analysis and breaking down of how we got here. Lots to learn. Well edited and not repetitive.......more

Goodreads review by Andre on September 02, 2016

Marc Lamont Hill presents a lot of statistics and data along with copious notes to posit that Black people, by and large represent the collective Nobody. He uses the recent killings of African-Americans at the hands of the police to explore the policies and practices that have created and sustain th......more

Goodreads review by Blakely on September 27, 2016

This book should be incorporated in to high school and college U.S. history curriculums across the nation. Marc Lamont Hill does an excellent job bringing to light the social, cultural and economic aspects of deeply rooted racism in America. While Hill cites a great number of statistics and empirica......more

Goodreads review by Nicole on December 04, 2016

I found very little new information in "Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable...", but I'm still very happy to have read it. Written and published before Trump's victory, the message in "Nobody" is even more ringing as we cope with the aftermath. We are a fractured society, but what......more


Quotes

“A subtle and persuasive historical and contemporary analysis of our state of emergency in America. He gives new meaning to the now popular idea of ‘intersectionality’ with intellectual gusto and political urgency!” Cornel West, professor and New York Times bestselling author

“[Nobody] examines the interlocking mechanisms that systematically disadvantage ‘those marked as poor, black, brown, immigrant, queer, or trans’—those, in Hill’s words, who are Nobodies…A worthy and necessary addition to the contemporary canon of civil rights literature.” New York Times

“Picking up the baton that James Baldwin left behind, Nobody gives urgent voice to the generation of the descendants of the poor, unacknowledged people Baldwin captured so vividly in his 1985 classic, The Evidence of Things Not Seen.” Essence

“A thought-provoking and important analysis of oppression, recommended for those seeking clarity on current events.” Library Journal

“An impassioned analysis of headline-making cases…Timely, controversial, and bound to stir already heated discussion.” Kirkus Reviews


Awards

  • Electric Literature
  • Nautilus Book Award
  • New York Times   Bestseller
  • Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books