Jamal Joseph's personal odyssey--from the streets of Harlem to Riker's Island and Leavenworth to the halls of Columbia--is as gripping as it is inspiring.

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Eddie Joseph was a high school honor student, slated to graduate early and begin college.

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But this was the late 1960s in Bronx's black ghetto, and fifteen-year-old Eddie was introduced to the tenets of the Black Panther Party, which was just gaining a national foothold.

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By sixteen, his devotion to the cause landed him in prison on the infamous Rikers Island--charged with conspiracy as one of the Panther 21 in one of the most emblematic criminal cases of the sixties.

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When exonerated, Eddie--now called Jamal--became the youngest spokesperson and leader of the Panthers' New York chapter.

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He joined the "revolutionary underground," later landing back in prison.

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Sentenced to more than twelve years in Leavenworth, he earned three degrees there and found a new calling.

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He is now chair of Columbia University's School of the Arts film division--the very school he exhorted students to burn down during one of his most famous speeches as a Panther.

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In raw, powerful prose, Jamal Joseph helps us understand what it meant to be a soldier inside the militant Black Panther movement.

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He recounts a harrowing, sometimes deadly imprisonment as he charts his path to manhood in a book filled with equal parts rage, despair, and hope.