C.L.R. James was one of the twentieth century's great minds. A true polymath, he made profound intellectual contributions in the areas of political philosophy, history, sports, literature, literary criticism, and cultural studies. In this critical introduction, David Austin examines James's core ideas and traces his unique perspective to his roots in the Caribbean. James is best known for his classic study of revolution, The Black Jacobins and Beyond a Boundary , one of the great books written about sport. He also wrote a groundbreaking novel, Minty Alley , but of all his writing, he considered his study of socialist self-organization, Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin his most important work.

James was also at the center of the international socialist and anti-imperialist movements in London in the 1930s and his work played an important role in African and Caribbean anticolonial movements in the 1950 and 1960s. Today his writing on American popular culture and the potential for totalitarianism in the U.S. ( American Civilization and Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In ) couldn't be timelier. And in all his work, he expressed his belief in the capacity of so-called ordinary people to achieve the extraordinary.