Black America Breaking News for the African American Community
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Memoirs by Kiese Laymon and Casey Gerald each tackle how pursuing the American idea of self-progress as black men was damaging not only to themselves, but also the disadvantaged communities where they came from, because their image of success set false standards for achievement.
Every Friday in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas.
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What We’re Reading
The personal cost of black success
“Both books take on the important work of exposing the damage done to America, especially its black population, by the failure to confront the myths, half-truths, and lies at the foundation of the success stories that the nation worships.”
📚Heavy, by Kiese Laymon
📚There Will Be No Miracles Here, by Casey Gerald
How an 18th-century philosopher helped solve my midlife crisis
“Here’s Hume’s really great idea: Ultimately, the metaphysical foundations don’t matter. Experience is enough all by itself. What do you lose when you give up God or ‘reality’ or even ‘I’?”
📚A Treatise of Human Nature, by David Hume
There’s more to life than being happy
“By putting aside our selfish interests to serve someone or something larger than ourselves—by devoting our lives to ‘giving’ rather than ‘taking’—we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness.”
📚Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
How to live better, according to Nietzsche
“Blending biography, intellectual history, and personal essay, Kaag follows three related journeys: Nietzsche’s evolution from adolescent upstart to middle-aged iconoclast, Kaag’s youthful attempt to retrace Nietzsche’s footsteps through the Swiss Alps, and Kaag’s adult effort to retrace his own retracing, this time with Hay and their 3-year-old daughter in tow.”
📚Hiking With Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are, by John Kaag
What’s wrong with sentimentality?
“The title essay … weaves together painful personal experience and incrementally detached observations about what empathy is and whether it can be taught.”
📚 The Empathy Exams, by Leslie Jamison
The Reference Desk
Write to the Books Briefing team at booksbriefing@theatlantic.com or reply directly to this email with any of your reading-related dilemmas. We might feature one of your questions in a future edition of the Books Briefing and offer a few books or related Atlantic pieces that might help you out.
About us: This week’s newsletter is written by Myles Poydras. The book he’s reading right now is Thick: And Other Essays, by Tressie McMillan Cottom.
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