Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik (Columbia University Press), a new study by historian Winston James, focuses on the political life of the renowned Jamaican writer and activist — “a central figure in Caribbean literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black radical tradition.” James describes how McKay’s Jamaican upbringing, followed by his early experience of racism in the United States and his contact with figures like Marcus Garvey, shaped his political consciousness, and drew him eventually to revolutionary socialism.