This book presents articles by James on Trotsky's life and work (unavailable in other collections), on the work of Edmund Wilson and Richard Wright, on the impact of European colonialism in Africa, on the interrelationship between U.S. and international labour history, and on African American history. Substantial essays by the editors and Paul Buhle, John Bracey, Martin Glabeman, and Charles van Gelderen contextualize James' own essays.

Scott McLemee has written essays and reviews for the C. L. R. James Journal, New Politics, the Village Voice, Against the Current, and the San Francisco Review of Books.
Paul Le Blanc is professor of history at La Roche College and the author or editor of many books on the labor movement, including Black Liberation and the American Dream, A Short History of the U.S. Working Class, U.S. Labor in the Twentieth Century, Rosa Luxemburg: Reflections and Writings, From Marx to Gramsci, andLenin and the Revolutionary Party. For many years he was the consulting editor for Humanity Books' Revolutionary Studies series.