R. Brad Malone

R. Brad Malone was a historian and bestselling author whose reputation reached its height only after his death. His landmark book, In History’s Shadow, spent 35 months on The New York Times bestseller list and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2025. Drawing on seven years of research, Malone’s work reshaped understanding of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and helped define the field of ethno-historical epidemiology.

He also authored a widely cited 1999 law review Student Note on federal affirmative action programs, later referenced before the U.S. Supreme Court and used in civil rights scholarship. He lamented its use in recent years by extreme right-wing groups with whom Malone, as a gay man, was diametrically opposed.

At the time of his unexpected death in Chihuahua, Mexico, Malone had begun research for a second volume of In History’s Shadow. Accounts of his execution-style murder differ. His family and publisher reported that he was targeted after he doggedly investigated the link between rebel Mexican General Pancho Villa and millions of dollars alleged to have been paid by German spies. Other accounts of his death, however, point without evidence to a botched drug deal or overdose.