"A gifted, rhapsodic essayist."
-- Chicago Tribune
Ellis Cose is one of America's most renowned journalists, media commentators, and author and speaker on several important issues of national and international concern. Cose is the author of Bone to Pick, The Envy of the World, and the best-selling The Rage of a Privileged Class. His latest book is The End of Anger: A New Generation's Take on Race and Rage (Ecco/HarperCollins). A regular commentator on television and radio, Cose has appeared on NBC's Today show, Nightline, Dateline NBC, ABC World News, ABC's Good Morning America, the PBS "Time to Choose" election special, Charlie Rose, CNN's Talk Back Live, and a variety of other nationally televised and local programs. A sought after keynote speaker, he has spoken at scores of universities (Yale University, Harvard University, Georgetown University, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Brown University, U.C. Berkeley, University of Southern California, Amherst College, The University of Illinois, Northwestern University, the University of Michigan), to press groups (the Press Association in Jamaica and the Sigma Chi association in Chicago), and in the corporate arena.
A longtime columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek magazine (1993 through 2010) and former chairman of the editorial board and editorial page editor of the New York Daily News, Cose began his journalism career as a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times - becoming, at the age of 19, the youngest editorial page columnist ever employed by a major Chicago daily. He has been a contributor and press critic for Time magazine, president and chief executive officer of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, chief writer on management and workplace issues for USA Today (where he has also served as an occasional columnist and member of the board of contributors), and a member of the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press. He has received fellowships or individual grants from the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, among others, and has won numerous journalism awards including four National Association of Black Journalists first-place awards.
The End of Anger is a meditation on race and a contemporary look at the decline of black rage; the demise of white guilt; and the intergenerational shifts in how blacks and whites view, and interact with, each other. In the heady aftermath of President Obama's election, conventional wisdom suggested that the bitter, angry, and destructive elements of discrimination were ebbing at last and America was becoming a post-racial nation. But with this dawning age that promised so much came shifting demographics and a newfound seat of rage in the polarizing Tea Party movement, even as black optimism gained ground, giving rise to questions about assumed truths concerning race in America.
Combining the talents earned from a lifetime in journalism with the insights and thoughtfulness of a close observer of the American experience, Cose offers a fresh, original appraisal of our nation at this extraordinary time, tracking the diminishment of black anger and investigating the "generational shifting of the American mind." Weaving material from myriad interviews as well as two large and ambitious surveys that he conducted - one of black Harvard MBAs and the other of graduates of A Better Chance, a program offering elite educational opportunities to thousands of young people of color since 1963 - Cose offers an invaluable portrait of contemporary America that attempts to make sense of what a people do when the dream, for some, is finally within reach, as one historical era ends and another begins.
In his capacity as president of Ellis Cose, Inc., he is executive producer, host and writer of "Against the Odds, a multimedia documentary series. The project profiles individuals who have overcome tremendous adversity. It debuted in 2008 in more than 100 radio markets in the United States - including eight stations in the top 11 markets. In 2009 the series was continued with four hour-long radio documentaries, which are being distributed by Public Radio International.
Besides the four National Association of Black Journalists first-place awards, Cose has also received the University of Missouri medal for career excellence and distinguished service in journalism, and two Clarion awards. He was also named the 2002 winner of the New York Association of Black Journalists' lifetime achievement award, winner of the 2003 award for best magazine feature from the National Association of Black Journalists as well as the winner of two New York Association of Black Journalists' first place 2003 awards for commentary and magazine features. In 2004 Cose was named the first recipient of the newly inaugurated annual Vision Award from the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. In 2006 he won a Unity award for commentary and also shared in a first place award from the Society of Professional Journalists. He also won the first place 2009 award for commentary from the New York Association of Black Journalists as well as the North Star Foundation's distinguished journalist award for 2009. For several years, he was a judge for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and is a member of the selection committee for the Chancellor Award for career achievement in journalism at Columbia University.
A Chicago native, Cose holds a master's degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University He is married to Lillian "Lee" Llambelis, Special Assistant District Attorney for Community Affairs in the New York County District Attorney's Office. They have a young daughter, Elisa Maria.
Praise for The End of Anger:
"A tremendously important book - gracefully done, painfully perceptive, and, as always in Cose's writing, fearless in its honesty about the ways that black and white Americans continue to be distanced from each other, even at the topmost levels of success."
-- Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities and Letters to a Young Teacher
"The most authoritative accounting I've seen of where our country stands in its unending quest to resolve the racial dilemma on which it was founded. With seasoned insight backed by groundbreaking research, Ellis Cose brings us up to date on the transformations that were both wrought by and reflected in the coming of Obama. Cose is among the most rigorous and original observers of the national pageant and his new book is a moving, sometimes startling, appraisal of this pivotal moment in our history."
-- Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Carry Me Home
"The End of Anger is a masterpiece in illuminating one of the most significant issues in the history of our republic. But it's more than that - it's a case study of how our values are transmitted and realized through history; of how social conditioning affects perception; and of how a truly gifted journalist can look at even the most painful realities through a filter of compassion and sympathy. It is one of those books every American of conscience should read."
-- Robert M. Morgenthau, former District Attorney of New York County
"The End of Anger may be the defining work on America's new racial dynamics. Deeply researched, artfully reasoned, and beautifully written, this remarkable and essential book takes you on a revealing journey through recent American history and provides a compelling view of its possible future. Cose deepens our understanding not just of race but of the power of generational transformation."
-- Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union
"Ellis Cose has brilliantly chronicled an epochal black Age of Rage and now, with equal originality, the End of Anger. Cose documents the paradigm shift from black rage to a post-angry racial politics in the Age of Obama. In the process, he illuminates the contemporary racial landscape while avoiding the illusion of a post-racial era and the romance of a static racial condition. This is engaged social history and critical analysis at its best!"
-- Michael Eric Dyson, author of Presidential Race
"Ellis Cose brilliantly explains why black Americans have become less angry, more hopeful, and more likely to transcend old racial boundaries over the past decade, even as the least educated members of every racial-ethnic group have fallen behind. His eloquent account will inspire hope and pride in black and white Americans alike - but it will also raise disquieting questions about whether we can consolidate and extend the impressive gains he describes."
-- Stephanie Coontz, author of A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s
"Once again Ellis Cose holds up a powerful lens to bring to light the thoughts, dreams, and perspectives of African Americans today. His findings and insights are an important contribution to the national conversation on race, class, and opportunity in America."
-- Geoffrey Canada, Educator
Praise for Other Books by Ellis Cose:
"The complex questions surrounding 'forgiveness, reconciliation, reparation, and revenge' probably require a scholarship of jurisprudence, philosophy, psychology, history, and literature. This is the kind of ambitious enterprise that the world's great religions deal with. But Cose meets the challenge . . . Bone to Pick is a timely reminder . . . and a useful addition to the canon of that struggle."
-- Washington Post on Bone to Pick
"A disciplined, graceful exposition of a neglected aspect of the subject of race in America."
-- New York Times Book Review on The Rage of a Privileged Class
"Lucid, eloquent and deeply personal book."
-- Washington Post on The Envy of the World
"A valuable, cogent and well-written contribution to an enormously complex subject."
-- Washington Post on A Man's World
"A book this country desperately needs, one with genuine healing potential..."
-- The New York Times Book Review on Color-Blind: Seeing Beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World
"A formidable first novel... crisp, fast-paced and engaging. In a genre glutted with lightweight fare, The Best Defense reaches higher."
-- The Seattle on The Best Defense