Dickerson enrolls in Harvard Law School, convinced her purpose is to advocate for the working class. Her journey from social conservative to hardcore leftist to iconoclastic independent culminates in a provocative, outspoken journalism career. An American Story covers some of the same ground as her journalism affirmative action, crime prevention, the black leadership vacuum but lacks its freshness. The irony of describing the intragroup dynamics that she's never quite figured out isn't lost on Dickerson. The realization is an apt one, but it saps her sense of purpose.
Some people work out their issues in therapy.
Some over glasses of wine with friends. Some take hostages and climb up bell towers with high-powered rifles. I wrestle with things on paper until they make sense to me. It's a disappointing, circuitous end to a journey that Dickerson has the smarts, but maybe not the personal insight, to have taken further. Angela Ards is the Haywood Burns Fellow at The Nation .