Notes from the first year: "This is how we lost to the white man" -- Notes from the second year: American girl -- Notes from the third year: Why do so few blacks study the Civil War? -- Notes from the fourth year: The legacy of Malcolm X -- Notes from the fifth year: Fear of a black president -- Notes from the sixth year: The case for reparations -- Notes from the seventh year: The black family in the age of mass incarceration -- Notes from the eighth year: My president was black.

Coates relays the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective: the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.