The Message is an immersive and compelling collection of four distinct essays. Each essay gives Coates room to reflect on his life as a lover of words and on his career as a journalist, and each explores how stories told well can both illuminate and haunt. He's grappling with a lot in this collection, examining, in particular, where he's fallen short in his own career, where overconfidence and a lack of accountability have enabled him to perpetuate limiting narratives. These essays are starkly vulnerable, as he consistently seeks out the fault lines in his own understanding of the world, measuring reality against his expectations in an effort to ask better questions. From Senegal to South Carolina to Palestine, his reflections are human and urgent, calling us to read and write more responsibly, to protect stories and their tellers, and to question the narratives of Empire.