Excellent biography of one of the century's great public thinkers, a man obsessed with using love to heal the wounds of racism.

With a writer as autobiographical as Baldwin, Leeming's research easily doubles as marginalia for his novels, short stories, and essays—deepening our understanding and empathy of Baldwin's attempts to work through his pain for the good of both himself and everyone else. Sometimes this would be perverted into a dark mirror, where he indulged his own self-destructive impulses by insisting that safety was antithetical to art, but Leeming writes as a close friend who loved Jimmy enough to speak forthrightly about his passions and his flaws.

Makes me want to read the rest of Baldwin's fiction and essays!