I suppose it's the historian's curse that sometimes the people they are writing about become such icons, that getting to the truth becomes impossible. Certainly two such icons of our time, of the civil right era, are Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

Both have become larger than life characters, whose actions and whose longtime friendship and then estrangement shaped not one, but several areas of our cultural landscape

In their new book Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith attempt to capture the real men behind the myths, as they look deeply into their intense two-year friendship and a bond that altered both lives and affected those of millions of others

My conversation with Randy Roberts: