Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” a brief, unflinching address to his teenage son on race and police violence that is well on its way to a lasting place in American letters, won the National Book Award for nonfiction Wednesday night. The fiction prize was given to Adam Johnson’s “Fortune Smiles,” an eclectic and edgy story collection set everywhere from the former East Germany to a Louisiana community reeling from Hurricane Katrina. Highly praised and intensely debated, on best-seller lists for months, “Between the World and Me” is among the most uncompromising works in recent memory to gain such a wide following and Coates’ acceptance speech – as blunt...
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