The thing about preaching...is that persuasion is not its principal aim. Often, the goal is to send churchgoers back into the world renewed, perhaps edified but surely fortified for the trials that await. This is what one gets from McGhee’s stunning, sobering, oddly hopeful book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. She is not fishing for converts in a depleted sea. She is encouraging the faithful and equipping them for the kind of intellectual and spiritual journey that produced her book.

[McGhee] ably moves through some of the largest infrastructural deficiencies in the U.S. and explains how a zero-sum mindset, combined with the constant plague of systemic racism, have led to fewer amenities for all.

... illuminating and hopeful.

Every so often a book comes along that seems perfectly timed to the moment and has the potential to radically shift our cultural conversation. The Sum of Us...is one of those books.

McGhee offers a mountain range of evidence.

Compassionate but also candid about the tremendous challenges we face, the author clearly shows how Southern racism extends throughout the country today.

... astute and persuasive.