Among many reasons to love Ta-Nehisi Coates' new piece: the footnotes

[Recursion]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/

First off: Coates with this piece clearly cements himself as the best public intellectual writing about America today, IMO.

Secondly, read it, if you haven't.

Thirdly: the footnotes are great. More authors need to do this. Both the content ("here is how this book or article informed this section" rather than a dry bare citation) and the format (in-line commentary that can be shown or hidden by clicking) are much more helpful than traditional footnotes.