“Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates has spent much of the summer at or near the top of the non-fiction best-seller list (it’s currently ranked number two). 

It’s easy to see why the book has struck a nerve with so many readers.  Part-manifesto and part-memoir, it’s is a powerful meditation on race framed as a letter to Coates’ teenage son. Toni Morrison declared it to be “required reading” for all Americans.

Of the many of you who wrote in to share your thoughts on this book, we invited three listeners, all parents, to join us for a discussion.

Abel Bartley is associate professor of African American and Urban History at Clemson University in South Carolina. Alex Ragone is division director at City and Country School in Greenwich Village. Anita Romero Warren is director of operations for Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn.