Ta-Nehisi Coates is right: The American Dream is a lie

On Coates' new book, Between the World and Me

Two American flags
(Image credit: Illustrated Christie's Images/Corbis)

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ta-Nehisi Coates' slim new volume, Between the World and Me, is that he has written a fresh and vital work on such well-trodden ground. It covers his childhood and early adulthood, about which he's written extensively; his experience learning French (ditto); and the murder of his friend Prince Jones (ditto once more).

Yet the book is simply riveting — I gulped it down in one short sitting, and am still thinking about it days later. Partly it is the different format; the book is set down as an address to his son on how to survive living "in a black body," which casts everything in a different light. Partly it is that a single unified presentation is necessarily different from many disconnected parts. But mostly, I suspect, it is that a single life can be a source of near-inexhaustible riches in the hands of a great writer.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.