What if you spent 20 years writing your magnum opus, only to pass away the day before its publication? That’s what happened to Columbia professor Manning Marable, remembered here in the New York Times.

“For two decades, the Columbia University professor Manning Marable focused on the task he considered his life’s work: redefining the legacy of Malcolm X. Last fall he completed “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” a 594-page biography described by the few scholars who have seen it as full of new and startling information and insights.”

It is tragic that Marable will never get the chance to go out into the world and talk about the book that was so close to his heart for so long. But there is something to be said for the fact that he spent his life pursuing work about which he was passionate. Now that work is out there in the world, and, judging by the response in the New York Times and elsewhere, the book will surely find a wide audience.