Today’s featured author is a bit of a departure. Up to now, we’ve been featuring historical figures. Today, we are featuring a modern day historian. Ibram X. Kendi is a New York Times best-selling author and award-winning historian at the University of Florida. His second book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction, (read the rest of his bio on his website: http://www.ibram.org/bio).

Lucky for you, he’s on campus — TODAY! Get yourself to the Lory Student Center Grey Rock Room at 6 pm tonight to hear him speak. While you are at it, get a copy of his award winning book. It is compelling, provocative, and timely. The Root, who says the book should be required reading, describes it this way, “Kendi has done something that’s damn near impossible: write a book about racism that breaks new ground, while being written in a way that’s accessible to the nonacademic. If you’ve ever been interested in how racist ideas spread throughout the United States, this is the book to read.” Kendi is currently working on three more books: Black Apple: A History of Black Power and Malcolm X, 1954-1974, (under contact with NYU Press), as well two follow up trade books to Stamped: (1) How to be An Antiracist and (2) Bones of Inequality: A Narrative History of Racist Policies in America.