King: A Life
by
88/99
Critics' Rating Index
98/99
Readers' Rating Index
92/99
Scholars' Citation Index
98/99
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About This Book
Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize. The first full biography in decades, Eig mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation's most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs
Reviews
"A must for readers interested in moving beyond clichéd catchphrases to see a more complete and complex King, the context of his charisma, and the creation and content of his character."
"An enthralling reappraisal that confirms King's relevance to today's debates over racial justice."
"A sober and intimate portrait of King's short life, and one that can't help but be admiring, given how much King accomplished, and how quickly he did so."
"A monumental biography ..."
"The majority of the book shows who King really was behind the famous speeches and celebrity."
"Makes him a real human being again, one who had affairs, smoked and drank, got angry and even plagiarized."
"For all his reporting efforts, however, Eig can't provide similar access to King's interior life ..."
"Eig's book offers a fresh examination of King and the swirl of social and political factors that were prevalent in his day."
"He appears to be so in control of his material that it is difficult to second-guess him ..."
"In general, however, the King we find here is one that previous biographers have charted."
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