In Stakes is High, Michael Denzel Smith states that he intended to write a book without mentioning Trump but that he was unable to get past the first sentence without doing so. He argues that Trump is not an aberration in the system but the end result of years of systemic racism, misogyny, inequality, and beliefs and policies that have led the country here:

Donald Trump is the inevitable result of holding tight to the American Dream. He was inevitable in 2016 and, barring a revolutionary turn...he will be inevitable in our future. He is the end result of allowing the delusion about our history, of making freedom synonymous with capitalist accumulation, of unearned arrogance and untempered individual ambition...he is all the things that create American culture , whether they are acknowledged or not.

Using history as well as an unflinchingly clear analysis, Stake is High is, in fact, a call to arms. He looks at the roots of racism by showing the many small indignities in Black neighbourhoods, including the lack of garbage bins on corners compared to white neighbourhoods, that add up to huge inequalities. He also talks about his own ancestor born into slavery and denied the right to learn to read and write meaning that he left no record of his life.

He examines, unflinchingly, systemic racism as well as misogyny and toxic masculinity; the failures of the justice and political system; police brutality and how the purpose of the police has, from its inception, been to protect private property; and he lays out the lie behind the myth of the 'American Dream'.

He argues that it is all inextricably tethered to 'white supremacist patriarchal capitalism", that he once believed that, although he would not see its end in his lifetime, his friends' children might live in a world without it. But that belief changed on November 8, 2016 and that is why he wrote this book:

I hope you already know, already feel, or if you don't, I hope I can convince you to feel along side me: stakes is high. Our very survival is on the line....[b]ut that something can be done about it. Revolution must be swift and uncompromising; it will be scary and potentially violent. Before it can be any of these things, it must be thought of as possible

This was not always an easy book. Many, no doubt, will agree with his analysis of the causes of the state of the nation but reject his conclusion. But, given what is happening right now in the United States, it is an important book and I recommend it highly.

Thanks to Netgalley and Perseus Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review ( )

A very good 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 hard light on endemic racism, toxic masculinity, capitalism, the justice system, politics, and the longstanding delusion labeled the American dream. There are no easy answers or binary rhetoric, which makes this a good book to read right now. How we got to this place—or the place we were at when Smith wrote the book, which is just short of this even harsher point in time—is not easily answerable, but it is understandable, and he does a good job of making the case for a broad and deep revolution. ( )