James's work has never previously been studied in its entirety. Now Paul Buhle, a longtime editorial collaborator with James, has produced a rich and informed analysis of his accomplishments. Drawing upon extensive interviews with James, his critics and his erstwhile supporters, together with many previously unpublished documents, Buhle's book offers an appreciative and enlightening portrait of the man and his times. The author also sheds new light on subjects ranging across Pan-Africanism, West Indian literature, British and American Marxism and the rise of third world nationalism.
"For Buhle, James was many things: artist, revolutionary, athlete, nationalist, internationalist, Anglophile, Graecophile, libertarian, Leninist, Black liberationist, Pan-Africanist, classicist and lover of popular culture. The central achievement of Buhle's biography of James is that he shows that James did not connect his various roles with the word 'nevertheless.' Rather he saw himself as an artist and therefore a revolutionary; as a nationalist and therefore a Pan-Africanist."
--David Roediger
"I thought it a good book, and a hard book to write, a biography. I haven't killed anybody, but he made it interesting ... A successful piece of work."
--C.L.R. James