About the Book:

Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, but soon found himself grappling with deeper questions about the destructive myths that shape our world. First we join Coates on his inaugural trip to Africa – a journey to Dakar, where he finds himself in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and the ghost-haunted country of his imagination.

He then takes readers to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on the banning of his own work and the deep roots of a false and fiercely protected American mythology – visibly on display in its segregationist statues. Finally in Palestine, Coates sees with devastating clarity the tragedy that grows in the clash between the stories we tell and reality on the ground. Written at a dramatic moment in American and global history, this work from one of our most important writers is about the urgent need to embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

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.