You know that "hey i have a ph.d. and i'm so smart let me tell you what i learned" genre of books (see Life of Pi)? This is one of them. ICK.

this story is a suspense thriller. it gets five stars because it really delves into the realities that teens are playing with fire when they get into hip hop without understanding history. the book criticizes these kids brutally but also loves them for their idealism. There is transformational and affirmational love of youth at work here; you've gotta read Hip Hop Wars if you want to know more about that! also, i think this book is best for hip hop heads because Mansbach really gets into issues

Didn't finishMansbach has something interesting, maybe even important to work out on the theme of white relationship to black culture, and our separation, and appropriation and...I just didn't want spend any more pages with the protagonist. So I'm leaving.May speak to others.

I REALLY wanted to like this...but i hated the ending. The middle is the best part and some valid/ thought provoking points are made but it got muddled and (to me) lost in the last part of the book. The writing reminds me of Paul Beatty's White Boy Shuffle.

This was honestly a struggle to get through, and the ending was just terrible.

I only managed to read part of this book. It started out great, then I got a bit lost, then it got great again and then I got lost again and didn't have the strength to persevere any further.

I had a hard time assigning stars to this one. It has passages that are both thought-provoking and wonderfully poetic, making it a worthwhile read. On the other hand, it's ultimately disappointing, and Adam Mansbach needs some serious editing help -- he has major point-of-view problems, for one thing. In the end, I liked the play version better.

i remember this book. back when i would go to the library and just pick out a few random books that had good covers and first paragraphs. this was one of them.and it could of been a great book if not for the way it ended.

I'd give it three stars for the first half of the book.. but what a cop out ending. Not worth the time.

Adam Mansbach's fatalistic portrayal of a white suburban race-traitor makes no apology for itself as an ironic backpacker remix of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Protagonist Macon Detornay, a self-proclaimed "white Bigger Thomas," spares no one in his all-out attack on whiteness. Macon makes talk show hosts admit to racist thoughts on national TV, yuppies walk home on the highway sans necktie, and ancestral baseball bigots turn somersaults in their tombs. His quick-witted critical overview of...

A horrible mess of a book. Mansbach is no dummy, but he's grappling with a lot in this sprawling, juvenile mess, and it comes across as naive and disjuncted. Maybe worth reading for the sheer breadth of sputtering chunks of pop culture and social criticism, but probably not.

For starters, I was blown away by the worldly vernacular. Mansbach did a great job at helping you relate to Macons right hand men. The plot unfolded perfectly and I almost found this satirical. What WOULD happen if a world apology day commenced. I believe it would unfold as written to be honest. The ending had me absolutely on my feet and overall this was an eye opening read.

i'd actually give it a 3.5it's one of those books you want to pull apart with a few well-selected friends. the ending SUCKED though. but don't take my word for it...

Refreshingly enjoyable mix of hip-hop culture with well-written narrative examination of race in America. So many of the nuanced perspectives of race interactions, expectations and disconnects are portrayed by engaging characters, the book is a testament to signifying. the whole book deconstructs the "expectations" of behavior based on race or status in life, and then re-injects those same stereotypes (plausibly!) in incongruous circumstances, making for very entertaining and educational reading...

Puts a lovely spin on the "Angry Black man living in a White man's world," as told through the perspective of a "woke" white boy. This is a MUST read with amazing wit, accuracy, and daring diction!

A satire, Mansbach's Angry Black White Boy follows the life and intellectual maturation of Macon Detornay, a Jewish kid from Newton, MA who goes to school at Columbia University. Detornay's goal is to be the downest white boy in history. Fueled by his ancestor's racist past, Detornay tries to immerse himself into black life and culture so much that his whiteness becomes irrelevant. He quickly learns that the social construct of race is much more complex than that, and sets off on a journey that

Read this book two days ago and am halfway into my next book it just took me a while to really process this book..there is alot going on and it is infuriating, hilarious and tragic all at the same time. The premise is a young white guy completely and totally enthralled and captivated by hip hop culture and the coolness exuded by his African American friends. This guy (his name is Macon) associates so closely with hip hop and its culture----one of my favorite quotes of the book is when he is remi...

4.29.92. Not sure what I was doing that day other than being a husband and father to two boys ages almost seven and five. But in Amerikan history, it is the day that LA, CA had a meltdown over the acquittal of the white police officers over the Rodney King verdict, and is the seminal event in young Macon Detornay's life.I was not familiar with this book, or it's author but saw it on the bookshelf of an AirBnb that my wife and I stayed at in New Haven, CT, the weekend we met our future daughter-i...

I thought this book was absolutely phenomenal. Admittedly, at first, I was skeptical, simply because I wasn't used to reading books about this subject matter, and didn't know what sort of attitude to go into it with. The novel, at times, is very blunt, and very, no-holds-barred, if you will, in a way that has potential to offend some people. However, the issue the novel covered offends me more than any words that were used ever could. If you're looking for a book that is constantly high-action a...

Adam Mansbach’s Angry Black White BoyImagine growing up in the suburbs of Boston but being a white Jewish boy robbing, vandalizing, and harassing people/property and becoming a “celebrity” for it. Meet Macon, racial discourse has become one of his biggest problems. He solves his anger by committing crimes against white people, even though he is white himself, and getting away with it. Angry Black White Boy, a fiction novel by Adam Mansbach, tells a story about a “down white boy” who tries his ha...