ABOUT THE AUTHOR SAUL ALINSKY was born in Chicago in 1909, and edu- cated first in the streets of that city and then in its university. Graduate work at the University of Chi- cago in criminology introduced him to the Capone gang, and later to Joliet State Prison, where he studied prison life. He founded what is known today as the Alinsky ideology and Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power. His work in organizing the poor to fight for their rights as citizens has been internationally recognized. In the late 1930's he organized the Back of the Yards area in Chicago (Upton Sinclair's Jun- gle). Subsequently, through the Industrial Areas Foundation which he began in 1940, Mr. Alinsky and his staff have helped to organize communities not only in Chicago but throughout the country from the black ghetto of Rochester, New York, to the Mexican American barrios of California. Today Mr. Alinsky’s organizing attention has turned to the middle class, and he and his associates have a Train- ing Institute for organizers. Mr. Alinsky’s early or- ganizing efforts resulted in his being arrested and jailed from time to time, and it was on such occasions that he wrote most of Reveille for Radicals. He died in 1972.