African-American people adore President Obama.

This is a column collection, or as one colleague called it, "history in real time," recounting my perspective on the highs and lows of this presidency from an African-American perspective. More than simply a column collection, the book has a substantial introduction that frames the [Barack] Obama presidency, explores the way Obama was treated by the political establishment and also how this first black president treated "his" people. In the epilogue, I use numbers to tell the story of African-American gains and losses during this presidency.

I hope his wife feeds him [Clarence Thomas, Justice, U.S. Supreme Court] lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. . . . He is an absolutely reprehensible person.

Don't believe the hype that black North Carolinians are not voting. We've heard this time and time again. It's just not the truth.

One of the challenges, I think, is that Americans are not sufficiently vested in foreign policy.

The published record will show that many in Chicago have mixed feedback on the President's [Barack Obama] role as organizer.

While the banks got big bailouts, a sizeable chunk of African-American wealth evaporated because so many people lost homes.