Seeing as most of what I know about these two men I've picked up by osmosis over the years, this looked like a handy introduction to their political lives. My overall impression after closing the covers is that I've been paying better attention then I thought I had, as while Joseph does make his point that Malcolm and Martin were not locked in an either-or contest, if I was going to describe this book "prosaic" might be the word I would chose. That said, these two statesmen, that's the only appropriate term, have been marbleized for awhile and, in an age of rampant racist authoritarianism, reintroducing their lives as activists is probably the goal here, and in that regard I think that Joseph succeeds. If it sounds as though I'm damning this book with faint praise, it made enough of an impression that I'd now like to read Joseph's book on Stokely Carmichael. ( )