Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012-2025

A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one of the definitive journalists of this era—acclaimed historian, Pulitzer Prize finalist, staff writer at The New Yorker, and Dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism—comes a kaleidoscopic, real-time portrait of the turbulent past decade.

“Gripping . . . a stirring catalog of institutions lost, of other lives cut short . . . Cobb is unfailingly modest about his insight and the power of his work to effect change. But that modesty belies the fact that Cobb’s writing makes us feel the injustice deeply.”—The New York Times Book Review

What just happened?

From the moment that Trayvon Martin’s senseless murder initiated the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, America has been convulsed by new social movements—around guns, gender violence, sexual harassment, race, policing, and on and on—and an equally powerful backlash that abetted the rise of the MAGA movement. In this punchy, powerful collection of dispatches, mostly published in The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb pulls the signal from the noise of this chaotic era.

Cobb’s work as a reporter takes readers to the front lines of sometimes violent conflict, and he uses his gifts as a critic and historian to crack open the meaning of it all. Through a stunning mélange of narrative journalism, criticism, and penetrating profiles, Cobb’s writing captures the crises, characters, movements, and art of an era—and helps readers understand what might be coming next.

Cobb has added new material to this collection—retrospective pieces that bring these stories up-to-date and tie them together, shaping these powerful short dispatches into a cohesive, epic narrative of one of the most consequential periods in recent American history.

Jelani Cobb is the current Dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, author of several books including The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. He is the editor/co-editor on multiple volumes including The Matter of Black Lives and The Essential Kerner Commission Report. Dr. Cobb is the producer/co-producer on documentaries including THE RIOT REPORT. He received the Peabody Award in 2020 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. Dr. Cobb currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Journalism Project and the Board of Trustees of the New York Public Library.