"#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 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."