"Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic "Politics and the English Language," but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories--our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking--expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three main parts takes 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 along with him 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 this capital of the Confederacy, with statues of segregationists still looming over the public squares. 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 life, this work from one of the country's most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world-and our own souls-and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths."-- Back cover.