Kill 'Em and Leave

James McBride is the author of the New York Times-bestselling Oprah's Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, the million-copy-bestselling memoir The Colour of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal and an accomplished musician, McBride is also a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.

Unlike most biographers of such heroes of Black music, McBride writes from inside the culture, loosely entwining his own story with that of his subject. There is bitterness here as well as celebration . . . This is not the smoothest or most comprehensive of biographies. But it has soul, and in this case that counts for more