Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), by Stokely Carmichael with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. New York: Scribner, 2003, 835 pp. $35.00, hardback. Stokely Carmichael is remembered most for issuing call for Black Power during James Meredith's March Against Fear in June 1966. Carmichael's participation in and contribution to Black Freedom Struggle, however, involved much more than that one moment in Mississippi. Unfortunately, many scholars have underplayed and overlooked depth and breadth of his involvement in movement. To right record, Kwame Ture, formerly Stokely Carmichael, and Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, an author, friend, and former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer, teamed up in 1997, less than six months after Ture was diagnosed with prostate cancer, to write Ready for Revolution, his life history. Their effort was a true collaboration. Ture tape recorded story of his life and Thelwell drafted chapters based on this narration. As Thelwell says, Ture was composer and he was arranger. Sadly, Ture died having read and edited only six of twenty-nine chapters that make up book. Consequently, their work blurs line between autobiography and biography. Thelwell, however, does a masterful job of allowing Ture's voice, and not just his words, to drive this narrative. Ture's trademark wit, for example, is omnipresent. Ready for Revolution begins with Ture's earliest childhood memories of growing up in Trinidad under stewardship of his paternal grandmother and her three daughters. It chronicles his move to New York City at age 11 to join his parents and discusses his transition to life in urban America. Particular attention is given to his experiences as a member of the only African family in an Italian and Irish neighborhood and at highly selective and racially segregated Bronx High School of Science (p. 60). These opening chapters shine important light on Ture's political education. They reveal that his grandmother and father, both devout Christians, laid moral foundation for his politics. Clearly, their egalitarian brand of Christianity anchored and informed his earliest social criticism. These chapters also make clear that Black community of New York City had a hand in politicizing him. While hanging out in Harlem, he listened to and learned from stepladder orators such as Queen Mother Moore who lectured about African and Caribbean independence movements. In addition, these chapters clarify role student Left played in his political education; White Leftists are often given too much credit for radicalizing his politics. At Bronx High School, he befriended Gene Dennis, a member of Young Communist League, and began attending Leftist study groups and rallies. Leftist explanations of social inequities and injustices resonated with him. He was taken aback, however, by absence of race and disregard for religion in these analyses. These oversights sharply curtailed influence that White Leftists had on him. Running in White Leftist circles did introduce Ture to Black socialist and pacifist Bayard Rustin who inspired him to become active in civil rights struggles by serving as an example of a secular activist who found meaning in Blackness. Ture's involvement in Civil Rights Movement during 1960s constitutes core of Ready for Revolution. Twenty chapters, fully two-thirds of book, deal solely with his activism during this turbulent decade. His matriculation at Howard University in Washington, D.C. provides entry point to this discussion. Here, significant attention is given to his involvement with Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), a campus organization that fought Jim Crow in Washington, D.C., sent volunteers to Freedom Rides, and worked closely with Gloria Richardson in Cambridge, Maryland. …