{"product_id":"the-beautiful-struggle-a-father-two-sons-and-an-unlikely-road-to-manhood","title":"The Beautiful Struggle: A Father  Two Sons  and an Unlikely Road to Manhood","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn exceptional father-son story about the reality that tests us  the myths that sustain us  and the love that saves us.  Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers  an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love  an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all  he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescenceand through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crackand into the safe arms of Howard University  where he worked so his children could attend for free.  Among his brood of seven  his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi  spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment  and Big Bill  charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period  and their fathers steadfast effortsassisted by mothers  teachers  and a body of myths  histories  and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled presentto keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction.  With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his fathers generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth  Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44945117970485,"sku":"ByrdShop_0385520360","price":28.81,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780385520362.jpg?v=1769887928","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-beautiful-struggle-a-father-two-sons-and-an-unlikely-road-to-manhood","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}