On Monday a new book on Malcolm X by the American intellectual and historian Manning Marable will come out. On Friday night Marable passed away. Though Marable, based until his passing at Columbia University, is less well-known outside the US, he started his career with a PhD dissertation on the South African political leader, John Dube (“African Nationalist: the Life of John Langalibalele Dube“, University of Maryland, 1976) and had an internationalist outlook (I remember interviewing him in Cape Town. I found him compelling and engaging. He was there on the invitation of Idasa (my former employer) for a comparative conference and research on racism in Brazil, the United States and South Africa.) The videos, above, and below were shot as marketing for his book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (excerpted here), and point to some of the new research uncovered by Marable .  Before his death Marable had also set up a tumbl blog and a website for his Malcom X Project which are worth visiting. Here and here are links to two obituaries. R.I.P.

—Sean Jacobs