[In the following review, Simmons applauds Mosley's depictions of unity within the African American family in What Next: A Memoir toward World Peace.]

The collective African American experience has evolved “a singular perspective on the qualities of revenge, security, and peace,” Mosley writes in this primer for post-9/11 geopolitics [What Next: A Memoir toward World Peace]. Our blood knowledge of the U.S.'s “rapacious capitalist interests” isn't exclusive, of course; but it is deeply personal in ways many other people don't acknowledge. Mosley's benchmark is the awareness that dawned on his late father, LeRoy Mosley, as a World War II soldier. Once this black member of the “greatest” generation learned under fire that he was an American with as much on the line as any white man over there, he accepted the responsibility of making America be America to him and his progeny over here.

“While my father wanted to stand side by side with the physical and economic development of white America, I want to be in spiritual harmony with the rest of the world,” says the son. This book is all the more moving for its efficient, elegantly spare and dispassionate language—typical Mosleyan prose. “How can we, black people of America, who have suffered so much under the iron heel of progress, stand back and allow people to starve and die as silently and unheralded as our own ancestors did on those slave ships so many years ago? How can we, the great defenders of liberty, allow our sweat and blood, taxes and minds to be bent toward the subjugation of the rest of the world?” Mosley is advocating the globalization of real freedom and democracy, which he distinguishes from amoral corporate capitalism. He claims a right of just regular folks like LeRoy Mosley to decide the priorities and conditions for our collective human life on this nicked and wobbly big, blue marble: “After all, Bush is our proxy, not our dictator.”

The writer suggests forming small, grassroots groups in which each member chooses a specific stream of the information deluge to follow, since no one person can absorb it all. This division might be geographic or by topic—for example, the construction industry or our Africa policy. These groups would meet regularly to pool their information, deliberate, propose and act in the variety of ways human ingenuity can devise to make its will felt.

Mosley also offers a starter set of core values, rules of fair treatment that I personally would like to live by. Mosley's fourth rule is poignant: “I cannot expect to know peace if war rides forward under my flag and with my consent.” Two must-read chapters, “Can the Victims of History Become the Heroes of the Future?” and “Our Silence,” address the fear, shame and battered self-esteem African Americans must shed to act with resolve.

Walter Mosley invites us to honor our peculiar American experience by leading bewildered and frightened Americans into the global human community. What Next marks the second time the bankable Mr. Mosley has a book with a black publishing house, stimulated, according to Paul Coates, publisher of the Black Classic Press, by criticism that successful black authors were not helping to build an African American publishing industry. What Next is a heart-stirring, step-by-step explanation of African American powers and responsibilities to fathers, mothers, daughters and sons. Readers will experience the love and reverence Walter Mosley has crafted into this encouragement affirmation of all humanity.