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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

A People's History Of The Civil War

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Jul 6 2009, 10:32 AM ET Comment

Anyone read this one? I bought it a couple weeks ago. Like most lefties, I read the Howard Zinn original in college. It changed my life, because before then I had this notion that only black people struggled. I knew a bit about women's suffrage, but very little about the labor movement. That said, I've grown a lot more skeptical toward explicitely polemical tellings of history. It's all polemical, to some extent. But I worry when I see it on top. And in the title.


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