Between the World and MeBetween the World and Me

The author presents a history of racial discrimination in the United States and a narrative of his own personal experiences of contemporary race relations, offering possible resolutions for the future.
Told through the author's own evolving understanding of the subject over the course of his life comes a bold and personal investigation into America's racial history and its contemporary echoes. Illustrations. Tour.
"For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him -- most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear.What were they afraid of? In Tremble for My Country, Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings -- moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's 'long war on black people,' or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police. In his trademark style -- a mix of lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, essayistic argument, and reportage -- Coates provides readers a thrillingly illuminating new framework for understanding race: its history, our contemporary dilemma, and where we go from here"--
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ' NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER ' NAMED ONE OF TIME's TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE ' PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST ' NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST
 
Hailed by Toni Morrison as 'required reading," a bold and personal literary exploration of America's racial history by 'the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race' (Rolling Stone)
 
NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN ' NAMED ONE OF PASTE'S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE ' NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review ' O: The Oprah Magazine ' The Washington Post ' People ' Entertainment Weekly ' Vogue ' Los Angeles Times ' San Francisco Chronicle ' Chicago Tribune ' New York ' Newsday ' Library Journal ' Publishers Weekly
 
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of 'race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men'bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son'and readers'the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.