The Fire Next Time

During the segregation era of the early 1960s, James Baldwin wrote two letters on race in America. The first, My Dungeon Shook, is addressed to his 14-year-old nephew on the hundredth anniversary of emancipation; it treats race as central to the country's history and urges the boy to turn his anger into a broad view of the Black American experience. The longer second essay, Down at the Cross, follows Baldwin from teenage preacher to his break with the Christian church, then recounts a dinner with Elijah Muhammad and the pull of the Nation of Islam in Harlem. The book's title is taken from two lines of an African-American spiritual that draws on the story of Noah.

It appears among the nonfiction titles in a roundup of every book Barack Obama recommended during his presidency.