What readers think of Losing My Cool, plus links to write your own review.

This book is fascinating. I have not read anything that so clearly defines the peer pressure for young blacks in today's culture.
I enjoyed reading about this author's decision-making process, and the influences that took him from a hip-hop life on the streets of his home town to become a graduate of Georgetown University with major in philosophy.

This was a fascinating story on so many levels. A young black man struggles for his identity and finds it in the black culture of Hip Hop and BET television. While fitting into a crowd, a group he never gets to know his true self. When away at college he finds himself and learns to appreciate the structured, collegiate life his father was preparing him for since childhood. This true story is told in an easy tone, and brings back all the teenage struggles for acceptance and the awakening of adulthood. I would highly recommend this for a book group.

I found this book very interesting. In fact I couldn't put it down and I was reading it while on vacation. On vacation I usually read fiction. The author is well educated and the book is well written. It explained a lot to me about my fifth grade students. They all fans of hip-hop music but not so much with the education. This gives me a small insight into their world. This might help me in teaching them. I liked the way he blended philosophy with the fascinating story of his life. I don't think we have heard the last of this smart young man. I think that this is an important book that should be read by all.

The ideas proposed in this book offer a culture shift away from what some believe to be popular, cool and hip. Hip today is not what hip was yesterday, and will not be what hip is tomorrow. The challenge for the young who want to be part of a group for reasons of safety, coolness or just belonging is to find the thoughts that can help create a cool, safe free society. The challenge for adults is to remember that what they do and say is heard and repeated by future generations. In "Losing My Cool" the family is challenging and wise and strongest group of all.

This is an important book. Williams chronicles his life in hip hop culture and his eventual break from that culture as he moves away from negative values (empty materialism, denigration of women) into a life of self examination. Along the way he becomes a philosophy major and Williams is particularly gifted at explaining difficult concepts in language that makes them seem quite simple. Although this is not an introduction to Heidegger or Hegel, you will walk away understanding the ideas they propound. The book is filled with extraordinary insight about the values hip hop culture promotes, what it is like to grow up middle class and black in America and how pernicious the hip hop values are for most young, black people. Williams is very insightful and is most compelling when he reflects on his life. One caveat: WIlliams seems somewhat uncomfortable and overly self-conscious when writing about himself and the people he knows and in the early part of the book, the writing is stilted. Persist! This is a book that is well worth reading.

I enjoyed the questioning of values that the author experiences as he encounters a variety of other blacks or African-Americans, and non-blacks that he initially dismisses when he goes from high school to Georgetown University. The text would make for interesting book club discussions as the individuals could draw parallels to similar soul searching they have made when faced with challenges to their own values.

Losing My Cool is one person's story about how he learned to "interpret and navigate the world around us." There's always more out there, if you want it, and more importantly, it's attainable, as Williams shows in his touching story. This is a valuable message for everyone. It's an engrossing story -- I couldn't put it down once I'd picked it up. Williams is a talented writer -- I hope we see more from him in the future. Losing My Cool is definitely a book I would recommend to others.

I like the author's voice throughout the book. He chronicles growing up and trying to find your place in the world very well. He is thoughtful in how he examines his life and the lives of his friends and his views about getting caught up in a culture and believing you are something you really are not are thought-provoking. The author acknowledges his father (and to a lesser degree his mother) and provides a showcase for the power and influence a key person with love, strength, patience and perseverance can have over a child's life. The description of his father's library and his love of books and knowledge was in itself a powerful message. This book is a good read.