The Price of the TicketRecommendations

The Price of the Ticket, a collection of over fifty years of Baldwin's outstanding nonfiction writing, is one of the main contributions to American literature in the twentieth century, and nowhere is this more clear than in James Baldwin's works. These personal, prophetic works speak to the heart of the American experience of race and identity with honesty and clarity.

Here are the complete texts of Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and The Devil Finds Work, as well as dozens of other pieces ranging from a 1948 review of Raintree Country to a magnificent introduction to this book, which, like so many of Mr. Baldwin's works, combines his intensely personal experience with the most in-depth examination of race relations. In some ways, The Price of the Ticket is an intellectual history of the American experience in the twentieth century; in others, it is a masterpiece of autobiography.