Description

**NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM**

Stamped from the Beginning is a redefining history of anti-Black racist ideas that dramatically changes our understanding of the causes and extent of racist thinking itself.

Its deeply researched and fast-moving narrative chronicles the journey of racist ideas from fifteenth-century Europe to present-day America through the lives of five major intellectuals – Puritan minister Cotton Mather, President Thomas Jefferson, fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, brilliant scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary anti-prison activist Angela Davis – showing how these ideas were developed, disseminated and eventually enshrined in American society.

Contrary to popular conception, it reveals that racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Instead, they were devised and honed by some of the most brilliant minds of each era, including anti-slavery and pro-civil rights advocates, who used their gifts and intelligence wittingly or otherwise to rationalize and justify existing racial disparities in everything from wealth to health.
Seen in this piercing new light, racist ideas are shown to be the result, not the cause, of inequalities that stretch back over centuries, brought about ultimately through economic, political, and cultural self-interest.

In forcing us to reconsider our most basic assumptions about racism and also about ourselves, Stamped from the Beginning leads us to a true understanding on which to build a real foundation for change.

**INCLUDED IN BARACK OBAMA’S BLACK HISTORY MONTH READING LIST**

Publisher Review

Upends many commonly held beliefs about how racism works * Boston Globe * A deep (and often disturbing) chronicling of how anti-black thinking has entrenched itself in the fabric of American society * Atlantic * Absorbing... This is a powerful, thought-provoking book that features a dizzying array of characters, deftly navigates complex intellectual terrain and draws on a wealth of evidence -- Simon Hall * Literary Review * Unusually original and groundbreaking ... Ibram X Kendi's brilliant book ... has disturbed some readers because of the author's fearless reappraisal of the words, actions and philosophies of some of the more revered heroes of American abolitionism and civil rights -- including African American heroes ... Kendi remains awake to nuance and complexity [yet] this is not a historian fearful of upsetting orthodoxies or questioning fixed reputations. He goes where the evidence takes him, which is not to where we or we might want it to go ... a compelling if discomfiting thesis ... persuasive and powerful -- David Olusoga * Observer * A staggering intellectual history * New Republic *