Daily Beast Best Books About the Volatile 60s
New York Times Book Review
“An insightful, highly engaging and fluently written biography”
Washington Post
“Joseph’s account of Carmichael’s life is well-written and well-researched, providing persuasive explanations for his appeal…Joseph’s biography fills a huge void and is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on the civil rights movement.”
Boston Globe
“This is at its heart a book of ideas — ideas about power, freedom, and identity — and of a life, the author writes, that ‘took shape against the backdrop of a domestic war for America’s very soul.’”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Mr. Joseph’s detail rich biography delves into the life of a political activist turned icon while not forgetting to show us his human side.”
Post & Courier
“A thorough and engaging account of one of the most important figures of the civil rights movement. Stokely achieves its primary goal of restoring Carmichael to his rightful place in the pantheon of influential Americans…Offers delicious details, thoughtful analysis and a good amount of drama concerning this enigmatic figure…Joseph’s landmark book is the best portrait yet of this important, complicated man and the America he so wanted to love but could not.”
Daily Beast
“An unflinching look at an unflinching man.”
Counter-Punch
“Peniel E. Joseph’s newly published biography of Black liberation activist Stokely Carmichael not only takes its rightful place next to Taylor Branch’s epic trilogy The King Years, but also to one of the most powerful autobiographies by any American: Stokely Carmichael’s own Ready For Revolution…. Stokely: A Life is a quality read. By highlighting the life of one of the US civil rights/black liberation most important organizers and thinkers, Peniel E. Joseph has done a great service to history and to the people Stokely fought for. Furthermore, Peniel’s text has lifted Carmichael out of an obscurity he not only didn’t deserve, but which also prevented a more complete understanding of a man who, with Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr., deserves to be recognized as one of the great leaders of one of the greatest grassroots movements for liberation in history: the Black freedom struggle in the United States.”
Afro-American
“Meticulously-researched and painstakingly-detailed, Stokely: A Life is a fast-flowing, informative read which intimately follows its subject from the cradle to the grave in absorbing fashion. In the process, this powerful portrait effectively re-positions him as an uncompromising prophet who played a pivotal role in the struggle for black equality.”
Amsterdam News
“A thought-provoking biography… a brilliant bio with plenty of brio”
Publishers Weekly
“This stunningly thorough appraisal of this radical activist, 50 years after the ‘heroic period’ of the civil rights movement, is both timely and relevant….should surely be considered required material for a fuller understanding of a critical, and ongoing, American struggle.”
Kirkus
“Joseph showcases the brilliance of the man, his exceptional ideals and his pursuit of an equality that was years ahead of his time.”
Booklist
“A…nuanced portrait of this activist, who started as a community organizer fighting for and with the underclass and who jolted the racist core of the American consciousness.”
John Stauffer, author of Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
“Peniel Joseph, the preeminent scholar of Black Power studies, has written the definitive biography of Stokely Carmichael, one of the most important figures of the post-World War II era. Exhaustively researched and beautifully written, Joseph’s nuanced biography reveals the crucial interconnections between militants and moderates, nationalists and integrationists, with Stokely emerging as an essential leader of the civil rights movement.”
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
"Peniel Joseph's vivid portrait of the charismatic man who coined the term 'Black Power' is not only a masterful biography of one of the leading black radical heirs to Malcolm X, it is also a compelling 'biography' of the final phase of the Civil Rights Movement and the birth and demise of the Black Power Era. Joseph brings to his subject his characteristically careful research and a wonderful capacity to weave a gripping tale. His biography will restore Stokely Carmichael to his rightful place as a major leader of two movements in the history of the African American's struggle for equal rights."
Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
"With Stokely: A LifeA, Peniel Joseph has produced a thoroughly impressive volume on the life and legacy of Stokely Carmichael, an often under-appreciated and poorly understood giant of the civil rights movement and African American history. Joseph's book is richly researched, masterfully executed, beautifully written, and will surely work as a vital testament to confirm the place of Kwame Ture, aka Stokely Carmichael, as one of the most powerful voices we have ever produced.”
Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
“Stokely Carmichael made his name with a two word proclamation: ‘Black Power.’ In this compelling narrative, Peniel Joseph, the leading historian of the black power movement, reconstructs Stokely Carmichael’s influential life from his childhood in Trinidad to his involvement in the Freedom Rides and SNCC to his role in the rise of the Black Panthers to his last days as a radical internationalist in Guinea, grappling with the politics of race and resistance, the promise and limits of black radicalism, and the temptations of celebrity. This book belongs on a short shelf of must-read biographies of the era.”
Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
“When Kwame Ture died in 1998, the New York Times obituary identified him as the ‘Rights Leader Who Coined “Black Power,”’ effectively reducing the most revolutionary voice in the Civil Rights movement to slogan. Peniel Joseph changes all that with this richly documented political and intellectual biography. Without polemics or apologetics, Joseph brings Ture’s radical ideas into clear focus—from his Pan-African socialist vision and his critique of empire to his unwavering commitment to mass-based revolution.”
Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home
“Peniel Joseph is a first-rate historian, and Stokely is an original rendering of civil rights history as much as a biography of one of the Movement’s most thrilling avatars. Through astounding research, vigorous prose, and just the right balance of sympathetic detachment, Joseph makes an lucid and absorbing case for why Stokely matters.”
Michael Eric Dyson, author of April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How it Changed America
“Stokely: A Life is a magisterial biography of one of the most important figures in the history of the black freedom struggle in America. Peniel Joseph paints a vibrant and sweeping portrait of the times that shaped Stokely Carmichael, and in turn, portrays how Carmichael impacted his age with imaginative social activism and provocative ideas. By tracing Carmichael's ascent through the ranks of black resistance to the front ranks of the struggle for "Black Power" -- the slogan he immortalized -- Joseph wields his poetic pen to tell a riveting story of a generation hungry for affirmation and influence beyond the outlines of nonviolent protest. If Martin was the King of civil disobedience, then Carmichael was the Prince of black revolution, and Stokely is the brilliant chronicle of his complicated and remarkable reign during tempestuous times.”
Gerald Horne, John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies, University of Houston
"Peniel Joseph long has been acknowledged as our premier interpreter of Black Power. And now with the publication of this magisterial book-- this exceedingly thoughtful and beautifully written study--Peniel Joseph has been catapulted into the front ranks of historians of Black America."
Tom Hayden, Director, Peace and Justice Resource Center
"Peniel Joseph has delivered a masterwork for generations to come. Without making the rough edges smooth, Joseph captures the essence of why Stokely Carmichael was the voice who aroused a voiceless generation, the wretched of the earth. We who knew the real Stokely in the many phases of his life always loved him, learned from him, laughed at his wisecracks, and were awed by his risk-taking and courage. He opened our dying culture to new possibilities of freedom."
David Levering Lewis, author of King: A Biography, emeritus professor of history at NYU
“Peniel Joseph's biography is a triumph of research and a gift of good writing. It captures the bolt of lightning that was Stokely Carmichael as it shattered the nonviolent consensus of the civil rights movement and left in its electrified wake the disconcerting mystique of Black Power and the romantic appeal of Pan Africanism.”
Cornel West
“Peniel Joseph’s marvelous book lays bare a fundamental truth—that Stokely Carmichael’s profound love affair with Black people made him one of the great revolutionary figures of the twentieth century. In the age of Obama, Joseph brilliantly reminds us what a deep commitment to fundamental change really means in the prophetic witness and sacrificial life of Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).”
Jeremi Suri, Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, and author of Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama
“Peniel Joseph has succeeded in bringing Stokely Carmichael back to life. Stokely transports the reader on an insightful and entertaining journey through postwar New York City, the Civil Rights Movement, and the late Cold War years in the United States and Africa. This is the history of a remarkable individual who embodied many of the tumultuous changes occurring around him. The powerful accomplishments and lingering disappointments of racial reform are elucidated in this beautifully written and deeply researched biography. Anyone interested in recent history should read this path-breaking book.”
Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
“By tracing the life and work of a brilliant and charismatic soldier for racial change, this beautifully realized biography opens windows into the complex and often vexed ideas, strategies, and contributions of Black Power. As a result, we now possess a richer understanding of how leadership and movement insurgency helped remake modern America under conditions of deep racism and wartime violence, and of how American insurgencies came to possess a global imagination.”
