This Pulitzer Prize winner for nonfiction details the life of George Floyd, telling how one man’s experienced sparked a global movement for change. In May 2020, Floyd died while placed in a chokehold by a white police officer after being detained for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase food and supplies during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The video of his death lead to global outrage and as Americans protested for change in policing policies, George Floyd’s name became synonymous within civil rights. But behind his fame is a man whose life was shaped and ultimately stolen by systemic racism. This biography, written by two journalists from the Washington Post, details Floyd’s life in the context of America’s longstanding and troubled history of institutionalized racism.

Wow. What a compelling and well written biography. George Floyd was faced with many barriers in his life caused by systemic racism that thwarted his access to education, entrenched him and the generations of his family before him in poverty, and put boundaries in place that prevented him from receiving the help he needed to overcome addiction. The journalistic abilities of Samuels and Olorunnipa lend to a compelling and detailed collection of well researched and well written stories of George’s brief but impactful life, while also including a plethora of information on slavery, segregation, systemic racial issues in housing laws, mass incarceration, police brutality, and many, many more issues Black Americans are faced with on a daily basis. I really learned a lot from this biography and highly recommend it.

Other books I recommend for further education on the issues discussed in this book:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein