The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
by Malcolm X, Alex Haley, Attallah Shabazz
List Price:
Our Price: $4.41
You Save: $3.58 (45%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.47 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Alex Haley, Attallah Shabazz, Malcolm XEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1992-11
ISBN: 0345350685
Number of pages: 460
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780345350688
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
Book Review: Find out who Malcolm X really was...
Summary: 5 Stars
There really wasn't anything I didn't love about the Autobiography of Malcolm X as told by Alex Haley. First of all, it gave this greater than life figure a humanistic quality. The read was very smooth considering it felt as if Malcolm X himself was sitting down to a cup of coffee explaining his life to me personally. The book is able to convey the progression of a human being through his own eyes. The book starts out with a foreword written by Attallah Shabazz, Malcolm X's oldest daughter. Shabazz provides great insight into what is about to come, clarifying many misconceptions people have of Malcolm X today. She explains many things in the book before they happen from the perspective of his little girl, attaching a softer side to the complexion of Malcolm X.
M.S. Handler writes the introduction to this autobiography. Handler describes X from his own perspective. Personally I appreciated the honesty with which he describes his first encounter with the great Malcolm X. He writes about the awkwardness of their first encounter and the strangeness with which her perceived X at the beginning of their relationship, and later he spoke of the strength he associated with X by the end of their relationship even comparing X to a black panther. Simply put, Handler is able to portray the progression of a human being through the eyes of an outsider.
Past the Foreword, and through the introduction we come to the actual content featured on the cover, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As told by Alex Haley." I was so engrossed in this book that I was writing down profound quotes, scribbling down little ideas as I read, not being able to part from the text. Malcolm X has incorporated life lessons such as, "Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business, you know they're doing something you aren't." He was a smart business man who had a bit of politician in him when he would express concerns much like this one, "Crime existed only to the degree the law cooperated with it...in the country's entire social, political and economic structure, the criminal, the law, and the politicians were actually inseparable partners."
It was incredibly fascinating to be able to peer into the mind of another human being with little to no inhibitions from the truth. The autobiography allows for one to see a scared Afro-American boy, a confused teenager, a violent hustler, an angry prisoner, a minister for the Nation of Islam with blind faith, and last but not least the person Malcolm X had become and the person he should be remembered for being.
As I first began reading, it is simply the story of a young African American man who grew up in Lansing, Michigan. The tragedies that Malcolm X faced in his youth were incredibly heart wrenching. The death of his father, the splitting up of their family, his mother being taken to the asylum are all of a few horrible events carried out by white men he experienced at a young age. This of course gives insight into his early adult years in which he expressed a disdain for all white people.
The amazing thing to me was that Malcolm was great at whatever it was that he wanted to do. In the early years in school he was a spectacular student but sadly discouraged by his white teacher. His later years as a hustler proved him to be vulnerable and susceptible to societies maladies, but he stood out in the business because he was smart.
As times goes on, my one sided conversation with Malcolm even sometimes angered me. The way that he jumped to so many different philosophies throughout his life without a second thought irritated me. For someone so smart, why didn't he just think for himself? He was obviously more than capable. I questioned why he is depicted as a leader, but it all fell into place upon the completion of this book.
When Malcolm X was in jail for quite sometime, he was able to put his incarceration to a productive use by reading everything and anything he could. This was commendable because how many people are able to get over themselves and look beyond the present and far into the future.
The ability of X to point out, admit, and regret his mistakes was gracious and very down to earth. He showed remorse for his hustling days, and explains his naiveté when he was involved with the Nation. I only wish that I had lived in a time period to be able to witness the intensity in which Malcolm X felt for the African American people.
The many personal thoughts and insights given by X into the behavior within the African American society at the time opened my eyes to so many things.
The love to lindy-hop, the indecisiveness, the many child like urges made me like the persona of Malcolm X even more. At the end of the book I was disappointed that my time with Malcolm had come to an end. The movie did not do this piece of literature justice. I would recommend that anyone who is capable of literacy to read this impeccable story of a great charismatic figure, but more importantly a human being.
Summary of The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
If there was any one man who articulated the anger, the struggle, and the beliefs of African Americans in the 1960s, that man was Malxolm X. His AUTOBIOGRAPHY is now an established classic of modern America, a book that expresses like none other the crucial truth about our times."Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book."
TEH NEW YORKTIMES
Malcolm X's searing memoir belongs on the small shelf of great autobiographies. The reasons are many: the blistering honesty with which he recounts his transformation from a bitter, self-destructive petty criminal into an articulate political activist, the continued relevance of his militant analysis of white racism, and his emphasis on self-respect and self-help for African Americans. And there's the vividness with which he depicts black popular culture--try as he might to criticize those lindy hops at Boston's Roseland dance hall from the perspective of his Muslim faith, he can't help but make them sound pretty wonderful. These are but a few examples. The Autobiography of Malcolm X limns an archetypal journey from ignorance and despair to knowledge and spiritual awakening. When Malcolm tells coauthor Alex Haley, "People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book," he voices the central belief underpinning every attempt to set down a personal story as an example for others. Although many believe his ethic was directly opposed to Martin Luther King Jr.'s during the civil rights struggle of the '60s, the two were not so different. Malcolm may have displayed a most un-Christian distaste for loving his enemies, but he understood with King that love of God and love of self are the necessary first steps on the road to freedom. --Wendy Smith
African-American & Black Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in African-American & Black Books
Leaving Birmingham: Notes of a Native Sonby Paul Hemphill
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1995-01-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
Wynton Marsalis: Skain's Domain: A Biographyby Leslie Gourse
Schirmer Trade Books; Published: 1999-09-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $49.97
The Miles Davis Companion: Four Decades of Commentaryby Gary Carner
Schirmer Trade Books; Published: 1996-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.36
Kaffir Boy in Americaby Mathabane
Free Press; Published: 1990-08-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops:
LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASSby Frederick Douglass
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1962-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $59.53
My American Journey My American Journeyby Colin L. Powell, Joseph Persico
Turtleback Books: A Division of Sanval; Published: 1996-01; School & Library Binding; Book
Best price: $81.39
Black Titan: A. G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaireby Carol Jenkins, Elizabeth Gardner Hines
One World/Ballantine; Published: 2003-12-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $29.55
Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Familyby Condoleezza Rice
Random House Audio; Published: 2010-10-12; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $22.53
Price in other shops:
Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World WarIIby Brendan I. Koerner
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2009-05-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
On My Own at 107: Reflections on Life Without Bessieby Sarah Louise Delany, Amy Hill Hearth, Brian M. Kotzky
Harper San Francisco; Published: 1997-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.63
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Confessions of an English Opium Eater (Penguin Classics)by Thomas De Quincey
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.53
Price in other shops:
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.by Martin Luther King Jr., Clayborne Carson
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 2001-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops:
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - A Biomythography (Crossing Press Feminist Series)by Audre Lorde
The Crossing Press; Published: 1982-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.96
Price in other shops:
Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Oxford World's Classics)by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Russell Goulbourne
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2011-07-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.21
Price in other shops:
King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Heroby David Remnick
Vintage; Published: 1999-10-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.38
Price in other shops:
The Dark Child: The Autobiography of an African Boyby Camara Laye
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1954-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Epilepticby David B.
Pantheon; Published: 2006-07-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.85
Price in other shops:
Halfbreedby Maria Campbell
University of Nebraska Press; Published: 1982-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English VerseFarrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1993-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops:
Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Critoby Plato
Prentice Hall; Published: 1987-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops: