Through a lifetime of plotting to overthrow capitalism, there is just one recorded instance of Cyril Lionel Robert James using a swear word. His code of conduct was forged in colonial Trinidad by his violent and puritanical father, Queen’s Royal College, and, above all, the cricket field. Before he knew the names Leon Trotsky and Toussaint Louverture, James’s heroes were the novelist William Thackeray and the cricketer he pseudonymously refers to as Matthew Bondsman, a wayward youth blessed with a beautiful cut shot.

A Life Beyond the Boundaries, a new biography by John L. Williams, provides the most comprehensive and intimate portrayal yet of the iconic speaker, author, teacher, theorist, and revolutionary — “Nello” to his friends. This is a fond account that maintains a critical distance. James’s charisma as well as his intellect earned him a cult following, but Williams is careful not to sound smitten until the afterword. He draws on unpublished writing, letters to lovers and comrades, historic sleuthing, and accounts from people that knew James to shed new light on his beliefs, character, and relationships, as well as the stories behind the great and lesser works that form his legacy.