By any measure, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) fundamentally altered the course of history. Published at the fifth anniversary of Carmichael's death, this long-awaited autobiography fills a yawning gap in the American historical record as it chronicles the legendary civil rights leader's work as chairman of SNCC, patriarch of Black Power, Pan-African activist, and social revolutionary. It is an unflinching, searing, often visionary testament to the man's legacy and joins the works of Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Nelson Mandela as a crucial and colorful contribution to contemporary history.

As in life, the Carmichael in these pages is the definition of charisma and determination. In sharp prose full of Carmichael's candor, wit, irrepressible sense of irony, and undying love for his people, Ready for Revolution relates with clear-eyed intelligence the epic struggle for human liberation in our time. Carmichael — who in 1978 changed his name to Kwame Ture in honor of his mentors, the revolutionary African leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure — recounts the course of his own experience and struggles, ranging from the prison farms and lynch mobs of Mississippi through the firefights and political intrigue of the African liberation wars to Black Power and Pan-Africanism. His transformation from immigrant child to impassioned activist is spellbinding. Populated with an international cast of luminaries, including James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Miriam Makeba, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Toni Morrison, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro, Ready for Revolution captures, as few books ever have, the pulse of the cultural upheavals that define the modern world.

More than the sum of its parts, this book is the personal testimony of a supremely courageous and committed African-American freedom fighter, radical thinker, and warm and engaging human being. Regardless of whether one subscribes to Carmichael's politics and ideas, there is no denying the overwhelming influence he had on American lives and history. And his view from the eye of the black-struggle storm is invaluable.

Howard Zinn

Author of A People's History of the United States

I knew Stokely as a brilliant, charismatic, and courageous figure in the Southern movement against racism. He was a thinker of extraordinary vision and a fighter of unequalled courage. We should welcome his autobiography as told to his friend Mike Thelwell.

Manisha Sinha,

Author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery

One of the most historically significant autobiographies from the civil rights era. No historian of the civil rights movement will be able to write about this period without consulting this indispensable book. Written in the language and from the heart of African America, it is also an immense stylistic achievement.

Mary King

Former SNCC worker and author of Freedom Song

Located midway between Gandhi and Lenin, Stokely engendered fierce love from his fellow SNCC workers — something inexplicable to onlookers who reviled him. No one seriously interested in the U.S. civil rights movement should be without this book. The provocative is made plain, the enigmatic clarified, and the elusive becomes sensible — with Stokely's unique voice, wit, and verve.

William Julius Wilson

Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

Fascinating...one of the most engaging and interesting autobiographies I have ever read. The struggles of the civil rights movement and Carmichael's vision of social justice come alive in this important contribution to social history.

Robert A. Hill

Editor in chief of The Marcus Garvey & Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers and professor, UCLA

Stokely Carmichael has bequeathed to us what is sure to become one of the great American autobiographies — the story...of a time when Americans, black and white, men and women, believed they could remake their America. With amazing humor, tempered by real humility, Ready for Revolution represents...what is surely the defining story of the American century.

Stokely Carmichael died in Guinea in 1998. Head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, he was also honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party and a bestselling author. Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is the author of the classic novel The Harder They Come and numerous influential articles on politics and literature.

Oriki: ancestors and roots — The house at the forty-two steps — A tale of two cities — "A better neighborhood" — Bronx science: young manhood — Howard University: everything and its opposite — NAG and the birth of SNCC — Nonviolence--apprenticeship in struggle — The great leap forward: the freedom rides — Nashville: a new direction — To school or not to school — The hearts and minds of the student body — Mississippi (1961-65): going home — A band of brothers, a circle of trust — Of marches, coalitions, dreams, and ambulance chasing — Summer '64: ten dollars a day and all the sex you can handle — They still didn't get it — The unforeseen pitfalls of "success" American style — Selma: crisis, chaos, opportunity — Lowndes county: the roar of the panther — "Magnified, scrutinized, criticized..." — "We gotta make this our Mississippi" — Black power and its consequences — Around the world in eighty days — Mother Africa and her suffering children — In that Ol' Brier patch — Conakry, 1968: home to Africa — Cancer brings out the best in people — A struggle on two fronts.