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

From one of the definitive journalists of this era — acclaimed historian, Pulitzer finalist, staff writer at the New Yorker, and dean of Columbia Journalism School–comes a kaleidoscopic, real-time portrait of our last turbulent decade.

What just happened?

From the moment Trayvon Martin’s senseless murder initiated the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, America has been convulsed by the new social movements–around guns, gender violence, sexual harrassment, 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 tries to pull the signal from the noise of chaotic era. Cobb’s work as a reporter takes readers to the frontlines 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 melange of narrative journalism, criticism, and penetrating profiles, Cobb 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.