David Leeming's Biography of James Baldwin: Celebrating the Life & Legacy of an Iconic American Writer

neeski: Excellent condition. Very informative book. Enjoy reading it.

United States on Jun 27, 2023

LarryMrW: David Leeming was a close friend of James Baldwin and he’s created a vivid biography. He captures all of Baldwin’s struggles with race, racism, religion, and his sexuality.
It’s chronological so it’s as if we witness him living his life.
It’s certainly NOT a dry biography of a boring person.

United States on Apr 27, 2023

Marjene Echevarria: Well Worth reading!

United States on Sep 13, 2022

C. Scott: This was an excellent secondary source for an academic paper on James Baldwin. The author was first an employee, then a life-long friend, and the biographer chosen by Baldwin. He received all manuscripts, notes, and papers from the family after his death. Lemmings insights and observations were valuable.

United States on Oct 24, 2021

Robert ‘Bob’ Macespera: James Baldwin is a person that dignifies everything around him, anything he touches, any room he enters, any place in which he participates. His moral stand during virtually all the second half of the XX century remains largely intact, and growing. He seems to be in fashion now (early 2021). This is good news as new materials on his life, new biographies, new movies based in his works, etc., will be made. Again, this is reason only to rejoice, for Baldwin fills and elevates anything he touches.
Yet the canonical biography of this giant remains to be written. While other major contemporary writers have been immortalized by at least one reference biography, James Baldwin has not been graced in that form yet. Too recent? Too controversial? Too large his legacy? We can only guess and wait. And hope.
This work is more a large essay, rather than a biography. First, it's written by someone close to its subject (a former close friend and lover). It is also read more like a remembrance of time long lost, rather than an academic work (it does not give many dates, not even that one in which James Baldwin was born). Yet it works and the 500 pages go rather quick. It is well written and...

United Kingdom on Mar 25, 2021

Elline F.: A very detailed look at Baldwin’s life from beginning to end. I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend to my friends

Canada on Oct 02, 2020

Mike: Easily one of the best books I've read. I'm a fan of Baldwin's work, and this privileged look at his entire life is fascinating and exciting. I honestly didn't want this book to end. But when it did, wow. Heartbreaking.

Canada on Aug 07, 2020

Paul Frandano: I'm old enough to remember the Freedom Riders, and the sit-ins, and Bull Connor, and Martin and Malcolm and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and so much more, all in black and white on a 19 inch Zenith. I've received unsubtle guidance and reading material from African-American comrades in arms during our Vietnam era military service. I've studied the history of the movement with a militant professor. I thought I had a reasonable, historically informed view of racism in America.

Then I read Jimmy Baldwin, and this marvelous biography, and my world shifted.

Baldwin saw himself as prophetic, and history bears his prophecies out. In one important essay after another, and then in his novels, Baldwin's analysis early in the 1960s of "the Negro problem" - as a "White problem" and as a perpetuation of racist mythologies that denigrate African Americans and elevate any and all whites (long before any talk of "white privilege" and its analysis, loosely analogous to that of Baldwin) - remains as cogent today as the day it was written.

Biographer David Leeming was in an ideal position to render Baldwin the justice he fully deserves. Leeming does indefatigable service to his...

United States on Nov 14, 2018

A new Fan: A revealing and intimate insight into this talented authors private life, to show how he was influenced by it, and how he used his experiences to become the "voice" of the nation, on the subject of African American culture .As a writer he not only attacked the issues of race, sex and class that are barriers to good human relations in American society, "he mourned for those who had created the barriers and had unwittingly allowed themselves to be destroyed by them". David Leeming helps the reader to understand how Baldwin used his skill with words in his novels and essays to witness this truth about living in America. The biography is as stimulating and compelling as Baldwin's original writings about it..

United Kingdom on Nov 22, 2015

Tony C (London): I'm not black or gay, but this biography, written with clear eyes but also much love by one of Baldwin's close friends, who lived with him and worked for him, resonated with me. James Baldwin, with his rickety private life, his depression, and his rage, was a great man who devoted his life to the quest for love , and to making sense of his cultural inheritance. An extraordinary man. Look up the YouTube videos -- his speech to the Cambridge Student Union when he took part in a debate with the right wing commentator Buckley (Baldwin got a standing ovation), or the interview with Mavis ?? when one of his plays opened in London. A great man....

United Kingdom on Nov 12, 2015