Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention - Hardcover

Marable, Manning

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713998954 ISBN 13: 9780713998955

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2011

Synopsis

Constantly rewriting his own story, Malcolm X became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and eventually an icon, assassinated at the age of 39. The details of his life have long since calcified into a familiar narrative: his early years as a vagabond in Boston and New York, his conversion to Islam and subsequent rise to prominence as a militant advocate for black rights, his acrimonious split with the Nation of Islam, and ultimately his violent death at their hands. Yet this story, told and retold to various ends by writers, historians, and filmmakers, captures only a snapshot, a fraction of the man in full.

Manning Marable's new biography is a stunning achievement, filled with new information and shocking revelations that will reframe the way we understand his life and work. Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of the darkest days of racial unrest, from the rise of the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement, examining his engagement with the Nation of Islam, and the romantic relationships whose energy alternately drained him and pushed him to unimagined heights.

Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century, a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.

About this title

Product Description:

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Review:

[A] groundbreaking piece of work. ...The result is not just a biography, but also a history of Muslims in America and a sweeping account of one man's transformation... It will be difficult for anyone to better this book. ... a work of art, a feast that combines genres skillfully: biography, true-crime, political commentary. It gives us Malcolm X in full gallop. (Wil Haygood Washington Post)

[L]ucid, hugely researched and surely definitive...an extraordinary story. (Sunday Times)

[A]n incredibly detailed account of Malcolm's life (and an investigation of his murder) and it is, of course, completely riveting....it is inevitably much more than a biography of one man... Marable is intensely and intimately sympathetic. (Geoff Dyer New Yorker)

In the pantheon of black American protest figures only Martin Luther King occupies a more exalted position, but it is Malcolm X whose legend has the greater street credibility and aura of cool...Now, almost a half century [after his assassination], Malcolm has finally received the biography that his unique role in black culture demands...A meticulous, comprehensive, and fair-minded portrait. (Andrew Anthony Observer)

Professor Manning Marable's Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is encyclopaedic in its approach. The endnotes and bibliography indicate the staggering breadth and depth of scholarship underpinning this volume....Undoubtedly it will stand as a last lecture on the subject by one of America's most distinguished historians. (Wilbert Rideau Financial Times)

[A] wealth of detail, some of it new, some of it old stories confirmed...At the end of it all, Malcolm X remains Malcolm X, for good or ill, one of the most fascinating historical figures of the 20th Century...a labour of love...a courageous endeavour. (Hugh Muir Guardian)

Malcolm's short life (he was slain at 39) makes a fascinating story...Mr Marable has scoured contemporary press clippings in America, Europe and Africa...and benefitted...from the recent release to the public of hundreds of Malcolm's letters, photographs and texts of speeches. (The Economist)

Marable gives us all the raw material for a harshly critical appraisal... Marable's is very far from the first biography of Malcolm, but it is undoubtedly the most penetrating and thoroughly researched. It clearly surpasses the best previous effort, Bruce Perry's 1991 study (Stephen Howe The Independent)

By the end of the 1960s, Malcolm's disciples had elevated him to what Manning Marable, in this weighty biography, calls 'secular sainthood'; in death, his image was quickly refashioned to 'embody the very ideal of blackness for an entire generation'... But Marable... resists the temptation of hagiography and fills in the gaps left by previous books. Where the autobiography, carefully organised by the NOI-sceptic Haley, presents an idealised vision of a man's growth as a thinker, Marable gives us Malcolm in all his self-contradiction and self-doubt... By refusing to pin him down, he offers glimpses of the human being behind the legend. (Yo Zushi New Statesman)

Striking... Marable is intensely sympathetic but always conscious of the contradictions of his subject...the fulfilment of a life's work (Geoff Dyer, Books of the Year Prospect)

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0713998954
• ISBN 13: 9780713998955
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608