Between the World and Me (Coates) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Powerful and passionate...profoundly moving...a searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Brilliant.... [Ta-Nehisi Coates] is firing on all cylinders, and it is something to behold: a mature writer entirely consumed by a momentous subject and working at the extreme of his considerable powers at the very moment national events most conform to his vision.
Washington Post


I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates’s journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading.
Toni Morrison


A work of rare beauty and revelatory honesty.... Between the World and Me is a love letter written in a moral emergency, one that Coates exposes with the precision of an autopsy and the force of an exorcism.... Coates is frequently lauded as one of America’s most important writers on the subject of race today, but this in fact undersells him: Coates is one of America’s most important writers on the subject of America today.... [He’s] a polymath whose breadth of knowledge on matters ranging from literature to pop culture to French philosophy to the Civil War bleeds through every page of his book, distilled into profound moments of discovery, immensely erudite but never showy.
Slate


(Starred review.) [A]n immense, multifaceted work. This is a poet's book, revealing the sensibility of a writer to whom words—exact words—matter.... [I]t speaks so forcefully to issues of grave interest today....[and] will be hailed as a classic of our time.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [W]hat it means to be black in America, especially...a black male.... This powerful little book may well serve as a primer for black parents, particularly those with sons.... [A] candid perspective on the headlines and the history of being black in America. —Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
Library Journal


(Starred review.) [Coates] came to understand that "race" does not fully explain "the breach between the world and me," yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered.... Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live "apart from fear—even apart from me." ... [A] moving, potent testament.
Kirkus Reviews