Originally published in 1955, James Baldwin's first nonfiction book has become a classic. These searing essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and Americans abroad remain as powerful today as when they were written. "He named for me the things you feel but couldn't utter. . . . Jimmy's essays articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time." -Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
 
Reading Notes To Myself is one of those rare experiences that comes only once in a great while.  The editor who discovered the book said, "When I first read Prather's manuscript it was late at night and I was tired, but by the time I finished it, I felt rested and alive.  Since then I've reread it many times and it says even more to me now."  The book serves as a beginning for the reader's exploration of his or her own life and as a treasury of thoughtful and insightful reminders.