Darling of the white guild crowd, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Via The Hill:

President Obama is spending his Thursday on a Martha’s Vineyard beach, a perfect opportunity to get started on his long summer reading list.

The president picked six books to read during his 16-day vacation, most notably Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a memoir about being black in America.

The author, who writes for The Atlantic, has often been critical of Obama’s efforts to address racial inequality.

During a White House meeting in 2013, Coates reportedly pushed Obama to make race a bigger factor in his signature healthcare law.

After the meeting, Obama pulled Coates aside and told him he had been unfair to him in a piece where Coates criticized the president’s call for African-Americans to take more personal responsibility.

Obama told Coates “don’t despair,” according to an account published by New York magazine.