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Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck

An unambitious 22-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother. A chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, New York City’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the 36th floor. After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.

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Week of January 17, 2022

Paperback releases for the week of January 17th include THE BLACK CHURCH by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America; LAND, in which Simon Winchester explores the notion of property --- our proprietary relationship with the land --- through human history, how it has shaped us and what it will mean for our future; THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL, a richly researched biography from Janice P. Nimura that celebrates two complicated pioneers --- Elizabeth Blackwell and her younger sister, Emily --- who exploded the limits of possibility for women in medicine; and Mateo Askaripour's BLACK BUCK, a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems.

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