Sometimes it seems like the name "Ta-Nehisi Coates" has become synonymous with contemporary nonfiction itself. (In the words of Stranger senior staff writer Charles Mudede, "Ta-Nehisi Coates is not perfect." He is not, in Mudede's eyes, a great novelist.) Luckily for us, he's back with another book of essays, his first nonfiction work in almost 10 years. The Message follows Coates to three sites of conflict—Dakar, Senegal, Columbia, South Carolina, and Palestine—to meditate on the destructive historical legacies of book banning, racism, and nationalism.