In this first ever biography of Louis Farrakhan, Arthur J. Magida presents an independent, objective, and insightful portrait of the controversial leader who has emerged as America's dominant - and most problematic - figure on the African-American scene. Magida, a Jewish journalist whose coverage of Farrakhan won the approbation of Farrakhan himself as well as the head of the B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League, has had unprecedented access to the leader of the Nation of Islam.

In Prophet of Rage, Magida penetrates the empassioned rhetoric that surrounds this enigmatic figure to reveal his personal story, tracing Farrakhan's life from his birth as Eugene Walcott in the Bronx, to his disciplined childhood in Boston's Roxbury, to his training as a classical violinist in youth, and his career later as a calypso singer.

We learn why Farrakhan turned against Malcolm X and later orchestrated the reestablishment of the Nation of Islam under the original creed of Elijah Muhammad. We see Farrakhan as an ally of the 1984 presidential candidate the Reverend Jesse Jackson, his unforgiving - and unforgivable - anti-Semitic remarks, and his day of triumph in October 1995 at the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.

Everyone seems to have an opinion about - or a visceral reaction to - Louis Farrakhan, but very few actually know that much about him or his Nation of Islam. Magida analyzes Farrakhan's role as a spiritual leader of a complex, if not always consistent, religion, one that blends Afrocentrism and American pragmatism.

Prophet of Rage situates Farrakhan in the context of black separatism in America, in the battles for command of the Nation of Islam, and in the struggle for leadership of the broader black community.