NEWS & REVIEWS
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
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
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!
A moving portrait of George Floyd, his struggles and his legacy
The Washington Post Book Review
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
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
19 of the most anticipated books to read this Spring
CNN
14 New Books Coming in May
The New York Times
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
“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
