Between the World and Me
A Spiegel and Grau / One World paperback of Ta-Nehisi Coates's 2015 letter to his adolescent son, written in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown and the years of police violence that preceded it. The book is short, structured as direct address, and refuses the consoling arc that readers often expect from memoir. It argues that American democracy was built on the plunder of black bodies and that safety is a myth sold to those who already possess it. The cover is the somber design the publisher used for books it wanted shelved under current events and literature simultaneously. Ideal reader: the reader who can tolerate being addressed as a witness rather than a consumer, or the parent who has tried to explain American history to a child and found the words inadequate.
