Black Radical

Nelson Peery was born in 1923 and grew up in rural Minnesota, the son of a postal worker in the only African American family in town. After fighting in World War II, he joined the Communist Party and worked for many years as a bricklayer and as a political revolutionary. The author of the award-winning memoir Black Fire (The New Press), among other works, he lives in Chicago.

"A well-told, scathing story . . . it resounds with a sense of justice." —The New Yorker"Necessary reading for any student of American history." —San Francisco Chronicle"Riveting. . . . [Peery’s] sparse, direct, sinewy prose pulses with passion and eloquence." —Quarterly Black Review