Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Jul 2015 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Ta-Nehisi Coates

About this audiobook

#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 NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: 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

Wildly overpraised, Coates shows why he's a precocious hack with little to say beyond the usual black revolutionary talking points. He's a perfect example of why our much-vaunted "national conversation" on race is no conversation at all but rather a hostage-taking in which blacks do the talking and collecting while whites do the listening, groveling and paying. His anecdotes, far from proving blacks deserve reparations, simply reveals the extent to which the publishing industry is in thrall to those who make a living shaming whitey for fun and profit.

Empire of the Summer Moon is a Pulitzer Prize Book from 2011. Treat yourself then read Between the World and Me. No offense Mr. Coates. June 29th, on one of the saddest years known to every child, woman, and man : 2020 (nothing fun about misinformation) miss you Kobe.

Thank you for sharing your beautifully written words to your son with us. You are Tolstoy Mr. Coates! If people don't read this book, their ignorance is a choice.

About the author

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is the recipient of a National Magazine Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently the Sterling Brown endowed chair at Howard University in the English department.