#REVIEW: The Death and Life of Malcolm X, by Peter Goldman

On July 22, 2026 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

This will be brief, as it’s been a stressful day; we had most of the rest of the work done on the bathroom (there are, sadly, still a couple of tasks to finish) and the guys were both an hour and a half late and then took much longer than they anticipated, which means I’ve spent the entire day waiting, and I’m currently chewing my arms off and climbing the walls at the same time.

The Standard Malcolm X Disclaimer: Malcolm is one of my favorite Americans; I nearly named my son after him (I had my wife talked into it and everything, and then we mutually decided to name him after his grandfather instead) and I have most of a shelf of books about him. “This book is about Malcolm X” means that I’m going to read it and unless it is tremendously poorly written, I’m going to enjoy it. It’s kinda baked in from the jump. And this book is certainly not poorly written.

Peter Goldman’s book was the first major biography of Malcolm X, coming out in 1973, with the edition I read dated 1979. I’m honestly surprised I’d never encountered it before, but I read The Afterlife of Malcolm X back in February and it got referenced enough times that I felt compelled as an amateur Malcolm scholar to pick it up.

And it’s a surprisingly solid biography, especially when one considers that it was written by a white guy in the early 1970s. Goldman appears to have had a good relationship with Malcolm and while the book isn’t as heavily footnoted as I might have liked, I didn’t encounter anything that smacked of shoddy historiography. He focuses heavily on the last year of Malcolm’s life, and then — and this is what made me decide to go ahead and write about it — also spends about a fifth of the book talking about the trial of the three men who were eventually convicted and sentenced for the assassination. Now, Afterlife covers that material as well, but that book is more interested in Malcolm as a cultural icon and I don’t think one book substitutes for another. The real interesting bit of the book is the 1979 addendum at the end, where Goldman says that he no longer believes two of the men convicted for the killing had anything to do with it.

I can’t really issue a blanket recommendation for this book, not because it’s bad but because it’s 2026 and there has been a ton written about Malcolm X in the years since he was killed. If you’re only going to read one book about him, you should read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a book every single American should read anyway. If you want to read a biography, specifically, I’d recommend Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life Of Reinvention or Les and Tamara Payne’s The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. If you already read those books and you haven’t read this one? Definitely give it a read.

Adulting!

On February 21, 2026 By Luther M. SilerIn life4 Comments

Took the old garage lights to the dump— did I mention we installed new garage lights?– got our taxes done, and knocked a couple of test holes in a wall today for a “weekend project” we have in mind that no doubt will take six months to finish. I feel like that’s a Saturday, right?

I have four letters of recommendation to write tomorrow, all for the same scholarship, and the building can only nominate one of the kids who apply to the next round. I am supposed to send the letters directly to the school counselor and I am genuinely tempted to write a real letter for the clear best choice and have the rest of the letters say “I choose that other kid.” I’m not going to do that, of course; I’ll make the best case I can for each of the kids, but I think the choice is pretty clear at least among these four. I think the world will forgive me if I use a common framework for the four letters, though. Hopefully. After that I have a week of lesson plans to write– for some reason I really want this week settled before I get to school Monday morning– and after that a combination of threats and prayers toward nature, because apparently despite it being nearly 70 degrees earlier this week we have a winter storm headed our way again? And, no. There are not going to be any more winter storms. Indiana had tornadoes yesterday, and it is an ironclad rule of the universe that tornadoes and snow cannot coexist in the same week. Just … no. I threatened to kill God on Bluesky the other day and it received a startlingly positive response; nobody wants to make me follow through here, right?

Today is the 61st anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, and while I freely admit that I did think when I purchased the above book about Malcolm X that I would read it during Black History Month, specifically starting it today was a happy accident. I could tell you without looking it up that Malcolm was killed in late February of 1965, so I knew it was soon if we hadn’t just missed it, but if I’d gotten the 21st right it would have been a lucky guess. I’m startled at how fast February has flown by; I have about 30 books I need to read in the next seven days, and my wife and I ought to figure out what we’re doing for our eighteenth anniversary at the end of the week.

Yeah. Eighteen years. I am so old that I have been married for eighteen years. Madness.

On my heroes

On February 21, 2015February 21, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

MTE5NDg0MDU1MDU1ODYxMjYz True fact: my son came very close to being named Malcolm instead of Kenneth. At the moment, we do not plan on reproducing again. But if we do, and if we were to have another boy, I plan on pushing very hard to name him Malcolm Abraham Siler, except, y’know, with my real last name instead of Siler, because that would be kinda weird otherwise. To the right there is my favorite picture of him (“him” meaning Malcolm X, not my son; the kid hasn’t been born yet, geez, pay attention.) I have a poster of that image that has been on the wall either in my house or my classroom for almost twenty years now.

Malcolm X was assassinated fifty years ago today. And ten years ago yesterday, Hunter S. Thompson shot himself. I hadn’t realized until this year that their deaths were so close to each other– calendrically, at least. And I probably still wouldn’t have noticed were not both anniversaries years easily divisible by 10.

It should be obvious to anyone who has spent more than about ten minutes reading my writing– particularly my nonfiction writing, of course– why I hold Hunter Thompson in such high esteem. My love for the man’s work dates back to my uncle handing me Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in high school, right around the time when I was contemplating going into journalism as a career. I already had one journalistic idol, a guy by the name of Mike Royko, who you’d better have heard of, and Thompson’s work blew my mind. I’d read everything of his I could get my hands on within a few weeks, and Fear and Loathing is on a short list of books that I try my damnedest to reread every couple of years. If I’m ever half as good as either of them, I will be very good at this wordsmithery thing indeed. Thompson’s fine ear for invective hurt him not one bit, as you can probably imagine; both of my journalistic idols were, at least in print, angry men.

My affection for Malcolm may perhaps be slightly harder to understand. Leave the politics aside for now, although truth be told there’s no reason to; the fact that Malcolm may not have liked me very much has no real bearing on what I’m allowed to think about him, after all. Here’s what is, to me, amazing about Malcolm’s life: the man quite clearly and deliberately turned himself into the man that he decided he had to be. Now, if you’d have asked him, he would of course have given the credit to some combination of Elijah Muhammad and Allah, depending on precisely when in his career you asked him. But Malcolm’s transformation in prison is one of the great human stories of our time regardless of his motivations for doing so. I reserve my deepest esteem for the autodidact, for people who went out and learned for themselves what society was either unable or unwilling to teach them. Malcolm spent his entire adult life learning and exploring about the world– and changing his mind when it seemed like he needed to.

The as-yet-unborn boy’s name is to be Malcolm Abraham, of course, speaking of men who formed their own intellects and personalities by force. I’m not quite cruel enough to force a kid in this day and age to go by Abraham, mind you– although at least some of the more traditional-sounding Bible names do seem to be making a bit of a comeback nowadays. Nah, we’ll go with Malcolm, which shortens nicely to Mal. In a pinch, I can remind people what a big Joss Whedon fan I am. Lincoln was America’s greatest president, of course, and looking into the future I see no equal anytime soon. But again, it’s the private Lincoln and not the public one who interests me; the man who, in the absence of schools, took it upon himself to gain his education, and his law degree, and eventually the presidency itself. I am no politician, and never wanted to be. But I would kill to have a fraction of Lincoln’s drive, and his keenly analytic mind is plainly apparent to anyone who has ever read any of his writing.

This isn’t all of my heroes, of course; that would require a bit more time and space than I’m willing to devote tonight. But I didn’t want to let the anniversaries miss without saying anything. Rest in peace, gentlemen; all four of you.

(Lincoln and Royko both died in April; Lincoln on the 15th and Royko on the 29th. Not as close as Malcolm and Hunter, but still kinda interesting, if you like coincidences.)