Jamaica is most well-known for its popular culture, crime and violence. Government, the state, is viewed as a malign force. In Politics in an Island State noted anthropologist Diane Austin-Broos brings an alternative view of Jamaica, its culture and governance. This history of Jamaica, and more pointedly, the history of politics in Jamaica, is brilliantly told through the biography of Wills O. Isaacs. Never the leader of his party – the People’s National Party – Wills was active in politics from the 1930s and was nonetheless a prominent and notorious figure.