Teju Cole views art as he views the world: with the perspective of an unsystematic historian who first observes, describes, and focuses on the obvious in order to penetrate the less visible that lies beneath. His essays deal with the experience of being on the move and with political morality, with racism and why even a president who reads the "right" books can still kill people in office. He writes about what intellectually nourishes him: about Baldwin, Sebald, and Tranströmer; about Brazil, Italy, Palestine; about the aesthetics of West African commissioned photography and about Instagram. In enriching, captivating, and original essays, Teju Cole reveals the wealth of his interests. Time and again, he draws enlightening connections, from the concrete present to poetry, from history to art. Familiar things, foreign things.