Peniel E. Joseph

Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written several previous books on African American history, including Stokely: A Life. In the dual biography The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph upends longstanding preconceptions of the twentieth century’s most iconic African American leaders. His is a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is a strikingly revisionist biography, not only of Malcolm and Martin, but also of the movement and the era they came to define. Author, Georgetown University sociology professor, New York Times contributing opinion writer, and contributing editor of The New Republic Dr. Michael Eric Dyson called it “a masterwork of bold historical revisionism that will change how we think of the dynamic relationship between Harlem’s Hero Malcolm X, and America’s Apostle Martin Luther King, Jr.”