This volume does not provide much psychological insight into why Malcolm X became such a protean figure (or why he needed to distance “his inner self from the outside world”), and it lacks the urgency and fierce eloquence of Malcolm X’s own Autobiography . Still, Mr. Marable artfully strips away the layers and layers of myth that have been lacquered onto his subject’s life — first by Malcolm himself in that famous memoir, and later by both supporters and opponents after his assassination in 1965 at the age of 39. from NYTimes book review