I couldn't write a review of Cornel West that would do him justice, so I'll just leave you with a few of my favorite quotes from his latest book, "Hope on a tightrope".

The book also comes with a wonderful audio recording of Dr. West in dialog with Tavis Smiley.

“Real hope is grounded in a particularly messy struggle and it can be betrayed by naïve projections of a better future that ignore the necessity of doing the real work. So what we are talking about is hope on a tightrope.”

“It takes courage to interrogate yourself. It takes courage to look in the mirror and see past your reflection to who you really are when you take off the mask, when you’re not performing the same old routines and social roles. It takes courage to ask – how did I become so well-adjusted to injustice?”

"I’m a Christian, so I have Jesus in the temple. I have a martyr against the marketeers."

“We need to see the world from the bottom up – through the lens of the cross, but America is so cross-averse.”

“Democracies are predicated not simply on Socratic energy, the critical engagement, and examination of dogmas, but also on trying to shape a person’s character in such a way that whether one is Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, secular, agnostic, or atheistic, you must have compassion for something bigger than your own egocentric predicament. You must be able to make connections across difficult boundaries. In a real democracy, it’s hard to remain tribalistic or regionalistic in any narrow way.”

"The vocation of the intellectual is to turn easy answers into critical questions and to put those critical questions to people with power."

"I am no way optimistic, but I remain a prisoner of hope."