Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream
Mychal Denzel Smith
"We are better than this" has been the rallying cry since Donald Trump was elected. But as New York Times-bestselling author Mychal Denzel Smith shows, Americans are too comfortable imagining our greatness. We like to believe in the rightness of our path and the inevitability of choosing our better angels. But historically, we've only come close to living up to the ideals we profess after we've been dragged, kicking and screaming, toward justice. Growth only happens when we confront our deceptions and our own complicity in them. In Stakes Is High, Smith exposes the contradictions at the heart of American life - between patriotism and justice, between freedom and inequality, incarceration, police violence. In a series of incisive essays, Smith holds us to account individually and as a nation.
Award History
1 wins · 1 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kirkus Prize for NonfictionMajor | 2020 | Winner | Official source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
02 Central places
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
03 Suggested argument
No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.
This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.
Growth happens only when Americans confront deceptions and their own complicity, especially those behind contradictions between patriotism and justice, freedom and inequality, and incarceration and police violence.
Model confidence 44%
04 Reading orientation
25 / 100 academicSerious trade
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 52%.