End of Anger, The

With The Rage of a Privileged Class, Ellis Cose, a venerated and bestselling voice on American life, offered an eye-opening look at the simmering anger of the black middle class. Some sixteen years later, Cose has discovered this group is much less angry and even optimistic about its future, despite a flagging economy and a deeply divided body politic. With The End of Anger, Cose examines these new attitudes as well as the decline of white guilt and the intergenerational shifts in how blacks and whites view and interact with each other. Weaving material from interviews and two large and ambitious surveys, Cose—an esteemed journalist—offers an invaluable portrait of contemporary America, one that attempts to make sense of what a people do when the American dream, for some, is finally within reach, as one historical era ends and another begins. The End of Anger is an indispensable exploration of how mores change from one generation to the next and may well be the most important book dealing with race and class to be published in recent decades.