(*From the introduction*) On August 25, 1970, anthropologist Margaret Mead and writer James Baldwin met for the first time to have three recorded conversations, totaling more than seven hours of tape that, once transcribed, would compose the book, *A Rap on Race* (1971). The Mead and Baldwin Book is an amazing account documenting the meeting of two of the twentieth century's paradigmatic thinkers and cultural creators discussing the meanings of "race" in the United Staes and in the world.