Daniel Matlin
Nation Building
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
By Manning Marable
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 493pp £30
Of the most iconic figures associated with America’s racial crisis of the 1960s, few lived to see the decade’s end. Like John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Malcolm X had barely entered middle age when, on 21 February 1965, death arrived with a bullet. Memory of these assassinations, popular and scholarly, sags with the intimations of lost opportunities and wrong turns. In their last months, we note with sad irony, President Kennedy had finally grasped the moral urgency of the need for desegregation; Martin Luther King had belatedly reached out to the urban ghettos; and Robert Kennedy, launched on his own campaign for the White House, had renounced war and championed social and economic justice. How differently things might have turned out.
Such commemoration speaks of the depths of regret at the course history did take. The bitter polarities of ‘black power’ and ‘white backlash’ could perhaps have been avoided, we imagine, had these men lived out their heroic destinies. Unveiling a new postage stamp featuring his likeness in 1999,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm