One of the most extraordinary autobiographies ever written--the definitive account of African-American youth in the ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s. During his first year at Howard University, Claude Brown wrote an article for the magazine Dissent about growing up in Harlem. The piece attracted the attention of a publisher, who encouraged him to write his autobiography. The result, Manchild in the Promised Land, traces Claude Brown's own transformation from a hardened, streetwise young criminal to a successful, self-made man. This autobiographical novel, in print for more than thirty years, has been widely praised for its portrayal of the "lost" generation of African-Americans whose parents left the sharecropping lifestyle of the South for the crowded inner cities of the North. Told with both fierce and dignified anger, Brown's story is a timeless testimonial to survival that will inspire and enlighten readers for many generations to come.