#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The renowned author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we telland the ones we dontshape our realities. Ta-Nehisi Coates always writes with a purpose. . These pilgrimages, for him, help ground his powerful writing about race. Associated PressCoates exhorts readers, including students, parents, educators, and journalists, to challenge conventional narratives that can be used to justify ethnic cleansing or camouflage racist policing. Brilliant and timely. Booklist (starred review)A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Vanity Fair, Town & CountryTa-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwells classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our storiesour reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmakingexpose and distort our realities. In the first of the books three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own books banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nations recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that citya capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the books longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground. Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the countrys most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our worldand our own soulsand embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
