Between the World and Me

What it's about

Written as a letter to his 15-year-old son, this is Ta-Nehisi Coates explaining what it means to live in a Black body in America. He moves from the fear that shaped his childhood in West Baltimore, to his awakening at Howard University, to the killing of a college friend by police, and on to Paris, where he glimpsed a different way to live. Part memoir, part history, part warning, it's a short, searching essay about how to live freely in a country that wasn't built for you.

Why it's worth reading

It's short enough to read in an evening and stays with you for years. Coates writes like a poet, and whatever you bring to it, it will change how you see American history and the present.

You'll love it if you liked

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration or His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice

Good to know

It's a personal essay, not a policy argument, so read it as a father talking to his son. About 150 pages, and many people read it in one sitting.