Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 I write to you as a brother and a father. I have carried your father in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him, and watched him learn to walk. I do not know if you have known anyone from that far back, but if you have loved anyone that long, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain.

#2 You were born in America, to parents who were not bitter. But your countrymen have caused you to be born under conditions not very far removed from those described by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago. You were born to be loved, and to strengthen you against the loveless world.

#3 The limits of your ambition were predetermined as you were born into a society that made clear to you from an early age that you were inferior to white people. You were not expected to achieve excellence, but to make peace with mediocrity.