Ibram X. Kendi’s STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING, The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America leaves no stone unturned and no one escapes the continuing story of racism as it moves from the old world to the new.

Every aspect of racism is explored dating to the earliest fabrications regarding the evolution of the black race. The work traces racism from early Europe to the slave ships, the Puritanical Great Migration to America, slavery, the early abolitionist movement, the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the modern day Civil Rights Movement, the NAACP, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kendi misses no one in painting this enormous 500 page canvas. Cotton Mather (Salem Witch Trials), Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison. W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Obama, Eugene Debs, Roger Taney, Dred Scott, John Brown, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Hip Hop, Rap, and the list moves on to infinity. No one, at least by degree, escapes the racist brush.

In this day of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, the 1619 Project, Trump, STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING is an essential read to gain a broad perspective of why racism and denial continues to embroil American Society and the body politic. Kendi’s research is absolutely all encompassing.

The book is enlightening and yet frightening, but despite history the author remains hopeful. “There will come a time when Americans will realize that the only thing wrong with black people is that they think something is wrong with black people.” “There will come a time when we fight for humanity, we are fighting for ourselves.”