NEWS & REVIEWS
'We had a really big purpose'
Poynter
2023 Pulitzer Prizes Announcement (video 58:41)
The Washington Post
The Pulitzer Prize Winner General Nonfiction
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2023 Audie Awards Finalists
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The Post's biography of George Floyd named a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and shortlisted for the 2023 Lukas prize
WashPost PR Blog
The Ten Best Nonfiction Books of 2022
TIME
Amazon's Best of 2022: Top 100, History & Memoir, History
Amazon
The Best Biographies & Memoirs of 2022
Barnes and Noble
Here Are This Year's National Book Awards Finalists
The New York Times
George Floyd biography among National Book Award nominees
Associated Press
The 2022 National Book Awards Longlist: Nonfiction
The New Yorker
EXCERPT How George Floyd Spent His Final Hours
The Washington Post Magazine Cover Story
George Floyd's America
The award-winning Washington Post series that inspired the book
Who Was George Floyd?
The New York Times
Saying His Name Remember His Life
The Progressive
The Humanity of George Floyd With Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
The Ringer
Telling George Floyd's story gave us a deeper understand of racism
The Washington Post
The America That Killed George Floyd
The Atlantic
How Post journalists reported the book on George Floyd's life and legacy
The Washington Post
George Floyd biography is an act of love, and of community
Sydney Morning Herald
George Floyd's America and the Pressures of Systemic Racism
Amanpour & Company
George Floyd biography explores the systemic racism that contributed to his death
PBS Newshour
Biography examines how systemic racism shaped the troubled life of George Floyd
NPR's Fresh Air
His Name Is George Floyd": Two Years After Police Murder, His Life & the Struggle for Racial Justice
Democracy NOW!
What would George Floyd's life had looked like without the crushing weight of racism?
The Guardian
A moving portrait of George Floyd, his struggles and his legacy
The Washington Post Book Review
Who was George Floyd? New book captures full scope of his life and family's legacy
CNN
Thoughts and reflections from the authors of a book on George Floyd as we approach the second anniversary mark - Symone Sanders
MSNBC
His Name Is George Floyd review - the murder that shamed the US
The Guardian
The Making of His Name George Floyd
The Bookseller
Robert Samuels & Toluse Olorunnipa, Co-Authors, 'His Name is George Floyd'
Washington Post Live
George Floyd's life, shaped by racism, tells an American story
The Center for Public Integrity
How George Floyd became an icon for Americans
AP
New George Floyd biography explores systemic racism and global movement
Axios
His Name Is George Floyd Book Review
Washington Informer
Who was George Floyd?
KQED
Many know how George Floyd died. A new biography centers on how he lived
NPR's All Things Considered
George Floyd is known worldwide for his death, but how did he live and what can we learn from the life he led?
The Source, Texas Public Radio
The 20 Best Books to Read This Summer
People
19 of the most anticipated books to read this Spring
CNN
14 New Books Coming in May
The New York Times
Books for Summer
Chicago Tribune
10 Books by Black Authors We Can't Wait to Read This May
The Root
56 New Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2022
Essence
28 of the best new books to welcome spring
OprahDaily.com
17 New Nonfiction Books to Read This Spring
The New York Times Book Review
An intimate look at the Black man whose murder sparked worldwide protests and a reinvigoration of the movement for racial justice
Kirkus starred review
PRAISE
“It is a testament to the power of His Name Is George Floyd that the book’s most vital moments come not after Floyd’s death, but in its intimate, unvarnished and scrupulous account of his life . . . a brilliantly revealing portrait of the structures of poverty, land theft and racism that shaped not only Floyd but also his kinship networks in the South. . . . Impressive.”
—The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"Sometimes a single book can change a national discussion, and certainly this is one. With diligence, respect, unflinching courage His Name is George Floyd affords tender, trenchant testimony to a man's life and lessons in the legacies of racism that took it."
—Barnes and Noble
“[T]he definitive work on who Floyd was and what his murder triggered. Gripping, heartbreaking, revelatory.”
--Oprah Daily
“[A]n expertly researched and excellent biography, a necessary and enlightening read for all.”
--The Atlantic
“Masterful, thorough and even-handed.”
--Associated Press
“A full, nuanced picture of the man whose murder sparked a movement.”
--People
“His Name Is George Floyd reaches way beyond the familiar narrative to consider the world of George Floyd, his country, his history, and the politics and policies that shaped his family—and the family of his murder, Derek Chauvin. It’s a feat of fresh reporting, and vivid, contextual contemporary history.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Detailed, vivid and moving.”
—The Washington Post, 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction
“This deeply reported biography reaches into history to help us understand how the forces of racism shaped every aspect of Floyd’s life, up to his tragic death.”
—NPR, Books We Love
“Sometimes a single book can change a national discussion, and certainly this is one. With diligence, respect, unflinching courage, His Name Is George Floyd affords tender, trenchant testimony to a man’s life and the lessons in the legacies of racism that took it.”
—Barnes & Noble, Best Books of the Year
“An incredibly powerful biography.”
—Walter Isaacson, Amanpour & Co.
“This is a profound book that everyone in this country needs to read.”
—Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
“Sad, tragic, and such a good read.”
—Yamiche Alcindor, PBS Washington Week
“Impeccably researched . . . Interwoven with the biographical details are incisive sketches of the political and historical events that have shaped life for Floyd’s family and other Black Americans. This multifaceted and exceptionally informative account is both a moving testament to Floyd and a devastating indictment of America’s racial inequities.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, Best Books 2022
“Writing with cogency and compassion, the authors free Floyd from the realm of iconography, restoring his humanity . . . A brilliant biography, history book, and searing indictment of this country’s ongoing failure to eradicate systemic racism.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review, Best of 2022
“This gripping oral history offers a behind-the-scenes look at the man, his loved ones and community, and the aftermath of his horrific death . . . A wrenching chronicle of one of the most devastating events of our time . . . vital and illuminating.”
—Booklist, starred review, Editors’ Choice
“This landmark biography . . . puts the systemic racism Floyd endured his entire life on full, unflinching display.”
—Library Journal, Best Books 2022
“A healing book about a truly terrible moment . . . this social biography of George Floyd is a masterwork.”
—The Progressive
“Excellent, important . . . Samuels and Olorunnipa’s achievement is to bring to life the flesh-and-blood man behind the stereotype and statistics.”
--TLS
“In painstaking detail and textured storytelling, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa reveal how George Floyd fought to live his entire life. Since we know George Floyd’s death with tragic clarity, we must know Floyd’s America—and life—with tragic clarity. His Name Is George Floyd is essential for our times.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist
“A much-needed portrait of the life, times, and martyrdom of George Floyd, a chronicle of the racial awakening sparked by his brutal and untimely death, and an essential work of history I hope everyone will read.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
“A vivid, necessary portrait of a Black man in America, in all its nuance, tragedy, and fullness. In his death, George Floyd’s name became a rallying cry for the entire world. And this extraordinary book brings to life, with thoroughly reported detail, the indispensable context of systemic racism in which he lived.”
—Abby Phillip, CNN anchor and senior political correspondent
“In the years that have passed since his dying declaration—I can’t breathe—we have come to know George Floyd as a symbol but have known little of George Floyd the man. In a monumental work of reporting and storytelling, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa reveal who George Floyd was in life, and the extent to which his death was the result not just of the callous choices of a single police officer but of four hundred years of societal decisions to devalue Black life. Amid a raging pandemic and urgent questions about our democracy, there has been little time to mourn George Floyd. The pages of this book provide us all with that that long-overdue opportunity.”
—Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and author of They Can’t Kill Us All: The Story of the Struggle for Black Lives
“This book is a wondrous feat of vivid writing and deep reporting, from the way it leads the reader through George Floyd’s final fateful day on earth to its masterly account of Floyd’s hopes and frustrations in the larger context of race in America.”
—David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and author of Barack Obama: The Story
“His Name Is George Floyd is a sobering, deeply intimate account of George Floyd’s life and all that he had to carry and contend with as a Black man coming of age in America. In a remarkable feat of reporting, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa help us come to know Floyd as a full, rich, complicated human being, whose murder and whose journey in life forces us to reckon with the unquestionable truth that race still very much matters in this country. Thank you Samuels and Olorunnipa for taking us behind the headlines.”
—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America
"His Name is George Floyd is part eulogy, part elegy, and part psalm. It dares to reclaim the humanity of George Floyd while simultaneously forcing the reader to confront a truth saturated with sorrow and with elements of hope that many in the nation refuse to accept. If we as a nation refuse to "say his name" and face this tragic moment, we shall condemn our democracy to the lower circle Dante's Inferno. Let us "say his name" and thoughtfully read and be moved by this powerful work of journalism and prose."
—Reverend Otis Moss III, pastor Trinity Church, Chicago
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. Viking, $30 (432p) ISBN 978-0-593-49061-7
Washington Post reporters Samuels and Olorunnipa deliver an impeccably researched biography of George Floyd, whose 2020 murder by Minneapolis police sparked nationwide protests. After recounting the events leading up to Floyd’s death, the authors rewind to his early years in Houston’s segregated Third Ward in the 1970s and ’80s. Recruited to play football at Texas A&M–Kingsville, Floyd became the first in his family to attend a four-year college, but struggled to meet the academic requirements and eventually dropped out. Back in the Third Ward, he got sucked into the drug trade and spent more than a decade in and out of prison before moving to Minneapolis for a fresh start. Interwoven with the biographical details are incisive sketches of the political and historical events that have shaped life for Floyd’s family and other Black Americans. Recounting how Floyd’s great-great-grandfather was forced to sell his landholdings in early 1900s North Carolina, the authors note that “between 1910 and 1997, Black farmers lost control of more than 90 percent of their farmlands.” Elsewhere, Samuels and Olorunnipa discuss the war on drugs, school segregation, redlining, and more. This multifaceted and exceptionally informative account is both a moving testament to Floyd and a devastating indictment of America’s racial inequities.
Agent: Karen Brailsford, Aevitas Creative Management. (May)
Publishers Weekly
