Audiobooks by Ta-Nehisi Coates

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER | NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER | PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST | NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST | NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY 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 Hailed by Toni Morrison as 'required reading,' a bold and personal literary exploration of America 's racial history by 'the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States' (The New York Observer) 'This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.' 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. Praise for Between the World and Me '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.' Toni Morrison 'Powerful and passionate . . . profoundly moving . . . a searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today.' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times 'Really powerful and emotional.' John Legend, The Wall Street Journal 'Extraordinary.' David Remnick, The New Yorker 'Brilliant . . . a mature writer entirely consumed by a momentous subject and working at the extreme of his considerable powers.' The Washington Post 'An eloquent blend of history, reportage, and memoir.' The Boston Globe '[Coates] speaks resolutely and vividly to all of black America.' Los Angeles Times 'A work that 's both titanic and timely . . . the latest essential reading in America 's social canon.' Entertainment Weekly

Ta-Nehisi Coates (Author), Ta-Nehisi Coates (Narrator)

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The Beautiful Struggle

Brought to you by Penguin. An extraordinary coming-of-age story, adapted from the adult memoir by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Water Dancer and Between the World and Me This was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to re-emerge on corners and prison tiers Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in the tumultuous 1980's in Baltimore known, back then as the murder capital of the United States. With seven siblings, four mothers, and one highly unconventional father: Paul Coates, a larger-than-life Vietnam Vet, Black Panther, Ta-Nehisi's coming of age story is gripping and lays bare the troubled, often violent life of the inner-city, and the author's experience as a young black person in it With candor, Ta-Nehisi Coates details the challenges on the streets and within one's family, especially the eternal struggle for peace between a father and son and the important role family plays in such circumstances. 'Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip-hop generation' Walter Mosley © Ta-Nehisi Coates 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Ta-Nehisi Coates (Author), Hayden Mclean (Narrator)

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The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood

Ta-Nehisi Coates' debut is an infectious, reflective memoir-a lyrical saga of surviving the crack-stricken streets of Baltimore in the '80s. Son of Vietnam vet and black awareness advocate Paul Coates-a poor man who set out to publish lost classics of black history-Ta- Nehisi drifts toward salvation at Howard University, while his ominous brother Big Bill finds his own rhythm hustling.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (Author), J.D. Jackson, Jd Jackson (Narrator)

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The Water Dancer

Brought to you by Penguin: The unmissable debut novel by the critically acclaimed author of Between the World and Me andWe Were Eight Years in Power - a richly imagined and compulsively page-turning journey to freedom OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK 'I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved... I wish Toni [Morrison] was alive to actually read this book. She would be so proud' - Oprah Hiram Walker is born into bondage on a Virginia plantation. But he is also born gifted with a mysterious power that he won't discover until he is almost a man, when he risks everything for a chance to escape. One fateful decision will carry him away from his makeshift plantation family - his adoptive mother, Thena, a woman of few words and many secrets, and his beloved, angry Sophia - and into the covert heart of the underground war on slavery. Hidden amidst the corrupt grandeur of white plantation society, exiled as guerrilla cells in the wilderness, buried in the coffin of the deep South and agitating for utopian ideals in the North, there exists a widespread network of secret agents working to liberate the enslaved. Hiram joins their ranks and learns fast but in his heart he yearns to return to his own still-enslaved family, to topple the plantation that was his first home. But to do so, he must first master his unique power and reclaim the story of his greatest loss. Propulsive, transcendent and blazing with truth, The Water Dancer is a story of oppression and resistance, separation and homecoming. Ta-Nehisi Coates imagines the covert war of an enslaved people in response to a generations-long human atrocity - a war for the right to life, to kin, to freedom. 'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. Right up there in the top five. I was enthralled, I was devastated. I felt hope, I felt gratitude, I felt joy... [Ta-Nehisi Coates] is a magnificent writer' Oprah

Ta-Nehisi Coates (Author), Joe Morton (Narrator)

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We Were Eight Years in Power

In these "urgently relevant essays,"* the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me "reflects on race, Barack Obama's presidency and its jarring aftermath"*-including the election of Donald Trump. "We were eight years in power" was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president." But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period-and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation's old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective-the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president. We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates's iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including "Fear of a Black President," "The Case for Reparations," and "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration," along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates's own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment. *Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Ta-Nehisi Coates (Author), Beresford Bennett (Narrator)

Audiobook

We Were Eight Years in Power: 'One of the foremost essayists on race in the West' Nikesh Shukla, aut

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates, read by Beresford Bennett. From 2008-2016, the leader of the free world was a black man. Obama's presidency reshaped America and transformed the international conversation around politics, race, equality. But it attracted criticism and bred discontent as much as it inspired hope - so much so, that the world now faces an uncertain future under a very different kind of US President. In this essential new book, peerless journalist and thinker Ta-Nehisi Coates takes stock of the Obama era, speaking authoritatively from political, ideological and cultural perspectives, and drawing a sophisticated and penetrating portrait of America today.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (Author), Beresford Bennett (Narrator)

Audiobook