Between the World and Me

· Sold by One World
4.6
560 reviews
Ebook
176
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

#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 • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT
 
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 PASTES 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.

Ratings and reviews

4.6
560 reviews
Rochelle
April 8, 2018
Beyond excellence. After reading Between the World and Me, I felt an unexplainable heaviness. As a reader, I could relate to such accounts both lived and witnessed over decades as a black young adult in America. After recently attending the World Premiere Theatrical Performance in Washington, D.C., as a writer, my visual appreciation for this book extends. It is a national treasure that every book shelf should occupy.
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kevin wilkins
July 27, 2015
People keep comparing this brother with James Baldwin, when in truth, his style is more similar to the stories and visions of Malcolm X's autobiography. The details and descriptions hit me as hard as Hale's interpretations of X, because Coates and I came up during the same time... in the same Reagan, crack strewn neighborhoods. I recognize this story because it is mine also. Great read. This is an important book.
21 people found this review helpful
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A Google user
August 6, 2016
Wow. It is a rare book that alters the way I see the world, and <i>Between the World and Me</i> has brushed aside a curtain and shown me a completely different world that I never knew existed, even though it is right here in the neighborhood where I live. It is a very touching, candid book that had really opened my eyes a great deal to the issue of race in America, and it has presented the issue from a perspective that I have always been ignorant of. It is an incredibly well-written book, informative, educational, and accessible in that it is written not from the perspective of a writer trying to educate the reader, but from that of a father trying to explain things to his son. By allowing the reader to peer over the author's shoulder. I wish this book could be made required reading for every American.
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About the author

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His book Between the World and Me won the National Book Award in 2015. Coates is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

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