The Cruelty Is the Point

Praise

“Serwer’s writing has been indispensable to understanding the chaotic world around us. Incisive, elegant, and deeply anchored in history, The Cruelty Is the Point is an essential guide to a perilous time in American life.”—Jelani Cobb, New Yorker contributor and author of The Substance of Hope

“Adam Serwer is the most incisive political writer of our time.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

“The essays in The Cruelty Is the Point combine an unsparing accounting of our history with an astute examination of our present.”—Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of They Can’t Kill Us All

“Serwer’s powerful truth-telling grabs us, shakes us, and warns us that as long as we wishfully forget the history of American cruelty, we will fail to see it coming for all that we hold dear.”—Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us

“No journalist has done more to advance our understanding of American power abuse in the age of Donald Trump than Adam Serwer.”—Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad

“For those of us trying to find our way through the fog of the Trump era, Adam Serwer’s essays served as a constant source of illumination and inspiration. The Cruelty Is the Point is an absolute must-read.”—Kevin M. Kruse, professor of history, Princeton University

“Atlantic journalist Serwer reflects on the antecedents, methods, and legacies of Trumpism in his clear-eyed and incisive debut essay collection. . . . Serwer draws parallels [and] . . .[CE1]  threads in snippets of his own biracial background and offers concise and illuminating history lessons on the Nation of Islam, the eugenics movement in America, and police unionization, among other topics. . . . This sober-minded inquiry into the Trump era provides essential perspective.”—Publishers Weekly

“A cogent examination of the challenges America faces. In a vigorous collection of more than a dozen essays, award-winning journalist Serwer, a staff writer at The Atlantic and former fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, considers the social and ideological forces that led to Trump’s presidency and, without intervention, will continue to shape American society. . . . A strong contribution to conversations about racism, injustice, and violence, all of which continue to plague this country.”—Kirkus Reviews