Ta-Nehisi Coates

"Probably my favorite living poet. No on else taught me more about how important it was to think about how words make people feel. It's enough for people to know something is true. They have to feel it's true."

"A book that deeply informs my journalist sense. Writers-particularly American writers-constantly feel the pull of soulutionism, the desire to assure their readers that there is a way out, even when there isn't. Judt refused this. History, he understood, does not exist to comfort us."

"History of soul music, told in profiles. I read this is as young man really trying to understand what journalism and history meant. Spent a lot of time meditating on Sam and Dave after this one."

"The definitive history of the Civil War. One of the greatest works of history I've ever read and arguably the best one volume history in existence. Having said that…"