King. Biografia

by Jonathan Eig, Tomasz S. Markiewka (Translator)

Martin Luther King

Kaznodzieja

Aktywista

Męczennik

Legenda

Pierwsza w Polsce biografia najsłynniejszego amerykańskiego obrońcy praw człowieka jest pozycją doskonale udokumentowaną – jako jedyna na świecie zawiera informacje z niedawno odtajnionych akt FBI – i kompletną. Jonathan Eig, dziennikarz i biograf m.in. Muhammada Alego, ściąga Kinga z piedestału i otrzepuje go z kurzu. Pokazuje przywódcę, który budował swoją strategię, zmagając się z depresją. Dopuszczał wyłącznie pokojowe protesty, ale nie potrafił żyć w pokoju z samym sobą. Przez trzynaście lat aktywności politycznej rozumiał, że walka może kosztować go życie – i wierzył, że zmieni oblicze współczesnej Ameryki.

King. Biografia to zarówno kronika drogi MLK od powiatowego kaznodziei do lidera ruchu praw obywatelskich, jak i historia życia w wiecznym rozdarciu. Napisana jak trzymający w napięciu thriller, została nominowana do National Book Award i była jedną z ulubionych lektur prezydenta Baracka Obamy w 2023 roku.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Politics, Biography Memoir, Audiobook, Race

704 pages, Hardcover

First published May 16, 2023

About the author

Jonathan Eig is the author of six books, four of them New York Times best sellers, as well as four books for children. He is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal. His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
His most recent book is "King: A Life." His previous book, Ali: A Life," was the winner of the PEN Award and hailed as an "epic" by Joyce Carol Oates in her New York Times review.
His other books are: "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig;" "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season;" "Get Capone;" and "The Birth of the Pill."
Jonathan served as consulting producer on the Ken Burns PBS documentary on Muhammad Ali.

Reviews

[Brina · Rating 5 out of 5]

May 6, 2024: Awarded Pulitzer Prize in Biography. A long overdue honor for the author.

In a nutshell wow. Let me get to wow. A few years ago I read Jonathan Eig’s Opening Day as my annual Jackie Robinson read. I read about Jackie Robinson every year and know his story well, but this book read like a story, a compelling story at that. I crossed checked with other nonfiction readers who I respect and they all noted that the books of Eig’s that they have read have all been top of the line. Even though at that point I had only read the one book, I could tell. As a primarily nonfiction reader I am always on the lookout as to what my preferred authors are writing or pursuing next. For the last few years, Eig’s news centered around his 2018 exploration of Muhammad Ali, which earned him National Book Award consideration. For his next book, however, Eig desired to tackle a topic greater than Ali. That subject, no small task, was Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. The history buffs among us would be waiting impatiently for that book, sure to be Eig’s signature work, to be published.

As a person who grew up reading biographies, I want the book to tell the person’s life story from a myriad of angles. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr has been a part of America’s ethos for over sixty years. Anyone fifteen years or more years older than me would have recollections about the man, either positive or negative, great or small. This biography, the first full length volume about King in thirty five years, was not written for people old enough to remember a living and breathing man. It was written for those born in the seventies and later, my generation and those that come after it, so we would know who this man was from beyond the I Have a Dream speech. Most school age children know the speech rather than the man. This birthday has become a federal holiday, a lead up to African American heritage month. Schools might teach the speech and explain to children to follow their dreams. Or they might have a brief lesson on Dr King. Libraries used to have programs about King on his birthday but now those are closed as well, so school children do not have as much of a chance to learn about who he was or what his movement was about. His birthday becoming yet another three day weekend on the academic calendar. Jonathan Eig set about to rectify this. Generations would learn who Dr King was beyond the I Have a Dream Speech. Since knowing about this book, I had been salivating at my chance to read it, and it lived up to its hype.

It is not necessary to regurgitate King’s life. That is the purpose of a biography, and Eig is among the elite when it comes to that. After a chance meeting with one of King’s childhood friends, he was encouraged to interview those who remembered him well, friends and family and acquaintances, before it was too late. He also is the first biographer to utilize works on the internet, his father’s unpublished memoir, and King’s extensive FBI files. From these primary source documents, Eig was able to piece together the life of Dr King from a uniquely new perspective. The background about segregation and Jim Crow and the key events in the civil rights movement all receive their due, but this book is about the whole person behind the movement and how he got to that point. Not all aspects of King’s life were positive or pretty. Even though I have read extensively on Jackie Robinson and the civil rights movement including one of Coretta Scott King’s memoirs, at times this book was still hard to take in, and I had to read it in small doses rather than as one long story, despite Eig’s extraordinary writing. His purpose has been to introduce the whole person and if that meant including the not so savory parts of both King’s life and the civil rights movement, then that’s what it would take to piece together this life for those too young to remember.

As a teacher I want to teach about Dr King to my students. Granted I am a substitute and I never know what class I am going to end up with on the days closest to King’s birthday. Somehow the discussion ends up back with I Have a Dream. Little did I know prior to reading that while this speech is considered a cornerstone moment in American history, it is hardly who King was. Although his father was a prominent minister in Atlanta, the schools King attended were segregated, and despite having dedicated teachers, not as advanced as the white schools. King skipped two grades during school and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen. This made him younger and put him at an academic disadvantage to his classmates, leading King to the lifelong tendency to plagiarize. From Morehouse, King attended Crozer Theological Seminary, his first time in the north, and finally to Boston University where he would eventually receive his doctorate in religion. It was in Boston that he wrote a letter of encouragement to Jackie Robinson, noting how his integrating a major sport would open up new opportunities to the race. It was also in Boston that King met his future wife Coretta and realized that he was called to preach in the south. Somehow before the civil rights movement took off, King had a calling that he would be the one to lead it. Still in his twenties, this was a tremendous burden to be placed on anyone, and, yet, King and Coretta answered this call to lead.

I am not sure where I would start teaching about King after reading this. Many blacks in the south were thrilled with the gains of the early parts of the civil rights movement. Yet a younger generation lead in part by Malcolm X and then Stokeley Carmichael were not satisfied with King’s adherence to passive resistance and non-violence. They called for black power and a more militant means to achieving societal gains. The more extremist sectors of the civil rights movement called King’s speech a sellout to whites and the federal government. On the other hand, the FBI, an old boys network resistant to change, believed King to be too extremist and wiretapped his phones for years. With access to most of these FBI tapes, we now know that King might not have been a perfect husband or person. He kept mistresses, gambled, drank, and shot pool. He slept four hours a night and was rarely home as he canvassed the country giving speeches and fundraising. When at home, he practiced his sermons and speeches so they would have the desired affect upon delivery, in King’s signature deep booming voice, that at times sounded like singing and prayer. This placed a heavy burden on Coretta as the mother of his four children even though she desired to travel and give speeches of her own. Was King the perfect person and minister that society made him out to be? Probably not but, not to condone his behavior, he would not have been the first prominent person in society to keep a mistress. Was he as left wing as the FBI made him out to be? Again, probably not; initially he just wanted to be treated like a full person under the constitution, an inalienable right that had been granted to white Americans two hundred years prior. Using passive resistance, sermons, peaceful marches, sit-ins, and boycotts does not paint the picture of an extremist person. Rather the release of these FBI tapes paints the bureau as ruthless, extremist, not to be trusted, all in the name of denouncing the person in the movement who was probably the least extreme. By utilizing the FBI tapes, Eig does give readers a more complex person, while stating his unfavorable opinion of the FBI.

Jonathan Eig gives his due to Coretta Scott King’s involvement in the movement as well as many key figures including King’s closest friends Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young. They both play a prominent role in the duration of the book. After reading this biography that was well worth its wait I have come away learning a more complete picture of a man who even I knew most by his speech, birthday, and date of assassination. With the recent death and all but retirement of some of the nation’s prominent historians, the torch has been passed to a younger generation of history writers who write history like the story that it is in a way that makes it accessible to younger generations. Jonathan Eig should have his name at the forefront of discussion when it comes to who is America’s top historian today. His work on King should be considered his opus, one I am privileged to have read, and one that vaults him to the top when discussing a who’s who of America’s history writers

5 stars
Book of the year

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monumental biography. Meticulously researched with compassion, and a love for the most iconic American Civil Rights Leader of all time, Mr. Eig deservedly won his Pulitzer Prize for writing "King".

Eig writes of Dr. King's life and death as if it were a kaleidoscope of images and moments that sear themselves into the reader's mind. Since MLK has become so iconic in the American lexicon, I read about a human being whose life mirrored those classic heroes that rise and fall.

I did not know Dr. King almost died from a stabbing made by a mentally disturbed woman named Izola Wade Curry in Harlem.

I learned that Dr. King had an ambivalent relationship with President Kennedy when it came to Civil Rights.

I learned that Dr. King had a far better working relationship with President Johnson who later signed the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act into law. Their collaboration fell apart when Dr. King became vocal about his antiwar stance on Vietnam.

King's relationship with his equally iconic wife Coretta was a reserved one. She stood quietly on the sidelines, pushing her own agendas of Civil Rights as she supported her husband. She took the high road when her husband's several infidelities came into light.

After King was assassinated, Mrs. King became a staunch supporter of "women's rights, gay rights, religious freedom, AIDS awareness, nuclear disarmament" (Eig 556). She would pass away in 2006.

Dr. King's relationship with his father, Daddy King was also fraught with tension, and I did not know that his mother Alberta would later be murdered shortly after his assassination by James Earl Ray.

Eig also chronicles with a deft hand of King's triumphs: With the help of Bayard Rustin, Dr. King was able to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

This becomes the time and place where history was made when King orated the legendary "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963. Eig writes about the impact of this speech, "King reminded listeners that his people have suffered, that their trust had been violated...fought and died in the struggle for freedom" (Eig 337).

Also he recounts when King wrote "Letter from Birmingham Jail", of how this would become "part of American History that captured the spirit of the Civil Rights movement and the fierce brilliance of its leader" (Eig 296).

King would go on to spar, and in equal measure have friendships and professional relationships with historical icons Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Robert F. Kennedy, President Nixon (whom he was on friendlier terms with, ironically instead of President Kennedy).

King would see the birth of Brown vs Board of Education, the Selma March of 1965, the murder of Emmett Till, and the genesis of the Vietnam War just to list a few of the world events that would dominate during King's life.

He would also unfortunately become the target of J. Edgar Hoover’s racist ire, and he’d pursue on bringing King down at every turn.

Eig manages to capture King's inner life in heartbreaking fashion, "the movement had forced the nation to address some of its inequities, and merely exposed others. The same liberals who helped fight Jim Crow in the South failed to address issues of job discrimination, housing segregation, police assaults on black communities in the North. These conditions would not change" (Eig 533). Though King was able to project a calm, stoic demeanor- he often felt that white allies would not fully acknowledge systemic and racist ideologies that had been put in place.

I truly felt that Dr. King was portrayed as a full fledged human: with hopes, fears, anxieties, lust and sexual desire- all things that J. Edgar Hoover hated about him as he conducted surveillance on him.

I think I walked away with a lot more information about Dr. King than I knew before in a roundabout way, and Mr. Eig has written this splendid and sprawling biography that is equally intimate.

As a kid growing up, I only knew vague information about Dr. King's legacy.

But as an adult and educator, I agree with Eig's opinion that "our simplified celebration of King comes at a cost, sapping the strength of his philosophical and intellectual contributions" (557).

I did not know much, and after reading Eig's book, I know a little more.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jonathan Eig has earned himself a lifelong reader. This bio of MLK is unputdownable. Seriously, it is ridiculously good. Extensively sourced and beautifully written, Eig's work presents a flawed, good man doing the best he could to fight for the oppressed while loving his friends and enemies. Sadly, Dr. King's story and the resistance he faced to equality is still a relevant subject. Gladly, Jonathan Eig has penned a volume that compellingly tells that story.

ARC provided.
Great book.

[LaShanda Chamberlain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the years, I have read several books on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his life & the movement. Of all those books, this is by far the best book on Dr. King. Jonathan Eig's biography of Dr. King covered many facets of his life which we had never really seen before. From start to finish, I could not put this one down.

Thank to Netgalley, the publisher & Jonathan Eig for the opportunity to read this ARC.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a long book. I had to fight the fatigue, but I could get through it because I learned a lot from it.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martin Luther King Jr. enters this biography speaking softly to a white woman who assumes he is a porter and exits it with a bullet in his face and a sandwich beside him. Between these two moments, Jonathan Eig’s King shatters every plaster saint and polishes the flesh and bone underneath.

The first chapters hold the reader by the collar through King's theological adolescence, his admiration for Gandhi (“Christ furnished the spirit and Gandhi furnished the method”), and his marriage to Coretta, whose sharp-eyed independence would challenge his script for domestic harmony. He debates with Mordecai Johnson, jousts with Daddy King over women and money, endures FBI surveillance that reads like a spy novel rewritten by a tabloid, and survives intra-movement mutinies that would have sunk a less stubborn or less charismatic figure.

Eig punctuates the chaos with small, intimate flare-ups: King's pained hesitation before embracing nonviolence, the kitchen epiphany in Montgomery when he believes he hears God speak, and the night he dreams of his own funeral, “Martin Luther King is dead,” a chilling voice tells him.

A boy asks him for his autograph; days later, a woman stabs him in a department store, leaving him so gravely wounded that doctors warned even a sneeze could prove fatal. In Harlem, he was both martyr and nuisance, while in Chicago, Mayor Daley treated him like a fly to swat, not a guest to court. Every city gave him a new wound, and every speech wrapped it in gauze.

Eig writes history with an ear for rhythm and a taste for conflict. His King walks a tightrope between God and Gallup polls, scripture and strategy, principle and survival. There are no halos here, only choices with consequences.

The Birmingham jail letters, scrawled on scraps of toilet paper, rise from the page like psalms of rage. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." And yet Eig refuses to let slogans do the work of understanding. He shows King stumbling into tactics, worn out by marches, irritated by Bayard Rustin, charmed by Sammy Davis Jr., humbled by Stokely Carmichael.

The book shines when it shows King’s contradictions not as flaws to be resolved but as the essence of his struggle. He preached nonviolence while hiring bodyguards, condemned Vietnam while flirting with political suicide, warned against self-promotion while chasing headlines.

He feared death, dreamed of resurrection, and spoke of hope with a voice cracked from overuse. “I’ve seen the Promised Land,” he said, knowing full well he might never reach it. And indeed, hours later, his blood seeped into Memphis concrete.

Eig delivers biography as symphony: prophetic, sweaty, courageous, and unfinished. Readers will emerge changed because the questions have deepened. How long? King asked. Eig answers with pages that echo: “Till we’ve built Jerusalem in America’s green and bloodstained land.”

King chewed his fingernails to the quick, shouted answers at quiz shows, and ran perpetually late as if the clock should obey him. He smoked in secret, hiding cigarettes from his children, and loathed razors that inflamed his skin before sermons.

At Crozer, his appetite stunned classmates; he told Pius Barbour that pork chops and collard greens were “too delicious to let utensils interfere.” He adored his little white dog Topsy, cluttered his suitcases with scraps of speeches and banana peels, and twice tried to end his life as a boy, once by leaping from a second-story window in despair.

On retreat in Jamaica, he wrote in slacks and dress shoes while Bernard Lee played valet and Dora McDonald typed manuscripts, one of them composed after he flipped through Ramparts, its cover showing Christ crucified in Vietnam. Crossing Checkpoint Charlie without a passport, guards waved him through, recognizing the man before the papers.

FBI taps caught him laughing, flirting, or confessing fatigue, sometimes speaking of women who caught his eye, sometimes sounding like a man already in mourning. Depression shadowed him in hotel rooms, yet he kept climbing into pulpits and streets, his flaws inseparable from his faith.

King’s compulsive pursuit of women threaded through hotel lobbies, speaking tours, and Southern Christian Leadership meetings, where whispered jokes about his “extra sermons” served as organizational shorthand. Even under relentless FBI surveillance, with microphones hidden in lamps and phone taps humming, he continued to chase intimacy as if loneliness required daily negotiation. In Coretta’s private tapes, recorded after his assassination, she spoke without theatrical sorrow, more with the dry exhaustion of someone who had long known her marriage contained more covenant than exclusivity.

His temper flared in traffic and during board meetings, where he could pivot from scripture to sarcasm in a heartbeat. He spent money with reckless optimism, overdrawing accounts while insisting providence would provide. Depression stalked him in hotel rooms, and his private writings sometimes resembled farewells.

By stripping away the stained glass and letting the reader see a man who smoked, doubted, strayed, and bled, this book transforms King from a monument into something harder and braver: a mortal who still chose to lead while knowing the cost. His greatness shone through the persistence with which he walked back into danger, refusing to abandon the cause when others faltered.

He organized a 382-day bus boycott that bankrupted segregation in Montgomery and turned a local preacher into a national voice. He faced dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham and brought the Civil Rights Act within reach. He marched from Selma to Montgomery with feet blistered and resolve unbroken, dragging the Voting Rights Act into existence through a sea of billy clubs. He forced the White House to listen, pushed the FBI into panic, and built a movement that reshaped American democracy with sermons, strategy, and the unyielding power of crowds.

His greatness lived in the way he bore fear without paralysis, walking into courtrooms, jails, and hostile crowds with his chin lifted and his voice steady. He spoke to presidents like a prophet and to sanitation workers like a neighbor, never confusing fame with purpose. He refused to retreat from complexity, warning that racism, capitalism, and militarism formed a three-headed monster, and dared to name it aloud. What made him great was persistence, the refusal to be quiet even when allies wavered and enemies multiplied.

Every paragraph of this book insists on remembering what was done, who did it, and what still remains: “He had come to believe that only love could redeem America, and he would die trying to prove it.” Ten out of ten.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook ……read by Dion Graham
…..20 hours and 45 minutes

We’ve heard “I Have A Dream” speech so many times we don’t even hear it anymore”.
Many people took MLK’s
nonviolent approach as passivity….. but….. forget that - Martin Luther King Jr. was actually very aggressive with nonviolent protests.
“MLK (called Little Mike at home) was deliberately misunderstood in his lifetime… And he remains so today”.

This is the first biography to make use of thousands of recently released FBI documents, (King was under stressful, surveillance), thousands of other researched papers, letters, business records, White House phone recordings, oral histories, un-aired television footage. Many family and friends that contributed to this book.
Those closest people to King saw his flaws all along. His power grew from his ability to grapple with contradictions.
But when pressure against King built up, he didn’t back down—-despite the obvious risks. Yet — MLK did have health problems, and one wonders if the stress that he lived under was partly the cause.

King reminded his followers of the moral beauty of their fight.
It was not only for fairness, it was for the future.
It was for redemption. It was for America to be a better loving country for all people.
It was for God.
Every single time that King could’ve stepped down… (and nobody would have blamed him), he kept going.
It was his faith in God that kept him going.

I got a lot of value and joy from the 20 hours I spent with this book.

Phenomenal Biography…..
…..covering a full life: family
upbringing (his parents, controlling Father, and two siblings), his education, dating a white woman in college, his marriage to Coretta Scott, and their four children, church dedication and leadership, the fight over the bus seat which was much bigger that the immediate injustice, jail, King’s sensitivities, depression, loneliness, beliefs that didn’t waver, his relationship with John F Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, the March on Washington Street…..etc. etc. This book is massively comprehensive….

The Dream….the hope….
“We the Negro people are no longer afraid” ….. “we have woke up” ——
Protesters came out of the woodwork——singing and walking.
“People had the power to change the world”.

King practiced educating White people of the Negro revolution.
He was arrested 29 times fighting for justice….and ‘hated’ the isolation.

The Baptist Minister and social rights activist was our greatest leader in the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 60’s.
His contribution to civil rights, freedom, an equality for African-Americans was beyond ‘business-as-usual’.
He also delivered some of the 20th century’s most exemplary celebrated speeches.

King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 —
Jonathan Eig should win the Pulitzer Prize for this book in 2023.

Given that there had not been a biography on Martin Luther King for almost 40 years… This book is an outstanding accomplishment— relevant to the years we’re living right now.

“Love is the only force that can capture hate”.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

"[Martin Luther] King mixed poetry, prayer, and patriotism. For another speaker, the result might have been ponderous, but King used these religious and poetic forces to inspire all of America to seize this moment of opportunity; to bring peace, love, and equality to those who had so long been denied; and to fulfill, at last, the promise of the American dream . . . the crowd roared and sang out in praise." -- regarding an early rendition of the famed 'I Have a Dream' speech in June 1963, on page 322

Bringing the same sort of thoroughness and detail to the literary table that earlier fueled Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season and Ali (both are excellent, by the way), it is perhaps no great surprise - but still certainly welcome - that author Eig now focuses on the civil rights icon Martin Luther King as the subject of his latest biographic endeavor with the aptly-titled King. It's another exemplary work, clocking in at nearly 600 pages, and paying respect to the man's regrettably brief thirty-nine years. Beginning with an unforgettable opening scene - with MLK's fraternal grandmother dispensing some heaven-sent whup-ass on the ignorant man who foolishly attacked her juvenile son (MLK's father) while he was performing a good deed for a neighbor - readers follow King from cradle to assassination as he expands his good works beyond the pulpit in the deep American South, bringing a bold sense of legitimacy and honor with his non-violent approach to achieving justice, change, and fairness for oppressed citizens. Admittedly, he was only human and not a saint (this was even pointed out by his strong and dutiful wife Coretta in the text), so the plagiarism during his college years and the multiple affairs during his marriage are discussed, but largely the narrative sticks to his tireless work throughout the 50's and 60's. It would appear he truly felt a calling to try to right the wrongs affecting hundreds of thousands of folks, and it was telling and extremely sad that towards the end of his life a melancholic and troubled MLK correctly and unfortunately intuited (especially in the aftermath of the murders of John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X) that he soon would also meet a violent and intentionally tragic end. I additionally learned of a number of previously unknown (to me) facts, such as his birth name was really 'Michael,' he attended seminary only an hour's drive from my hometown (!), and he survived being stabbed by a deranged woman during a publicity appearance in 1958, with immediate recovery instructions being not to sneeze or it could possibly cause his demise (!!!). This was an absorbing and invigorating book.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Profile in Courage

Author Jonathan Eig’s biography on Martin Luther King Jr is a deeply researched and nuanced portrayal of the great man, offering a fresh perspective on one of the most iconic figures in American history. Published in 2023, King: A Life revisits King’s life with the benefit of newly uncovered FBI files, personal letters, and interviews, providing a fuller picture of both the man and the movement he led. One of the huge takeaways about King, is that he was a man of courage in the face of adversity from all sides of the political spectrum. He maintained the focus of non-violent protests even under pressure from white supremacist, government, FBI and black power movements. Even when he knew his life was at risk he continued with his message.

Eig moves beyond the simplified, almost saint-like image of King that has often been perpetuated, revealing him as a deeply human figure; brilliant, passionate, but also plagued by doubt, fear, and personal struggles. The book captures King’s growth as a leader, his evolving strategies for civil rights activism, and his increasingly radical critiques of racism, capitalism, and militarism.

In King: A Life Eig looks at the vulnerabilities that surrounded King, and delves into the toll his activism took on his mental health, his relationships, and his faith. At the same time, the narrative underscores King’s resilience and courage in the face of relentless government surveillance, public criticism, and threats to his life. Eig also contextualises King within the broader civil rights movement, highlighting the contributions and tensions among other leaders and activists. This approach not only enriches the story but also emphasizes that the movement was a collective effort, not the work of one man alone.

King: A Life has been praised for its vivid prose and meticulous research, though some critics note that its detailed focus on King’s flaws risks overshadowing his extraordinary achievements. Nonetheless, it is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of Martin Luther King Jr. and the enduring relevance of his legacy. This biography stands as a powerful reminder of King’s humanity and the transformative power of his vision, making it a standout addition to the literature on civil rights and American history.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won’t try to review Martin Luther King’s life, as some others have done. I don’t generally read biographies, but Jonathan Eig may have changed that. I thought this book was extraordinary. I can’t comment on how much of this is new, however it appears to be very well researched - evidenced by 70 pages of notes, a list of over 200 interviewees and hundreds of quotes. It’s also comprehensive and extremely well written, a really compelling read with a strong narrative. Eig doesn’t present MLK as a saint, instead painting him as a real person struggling to do what he believed in, while trying to deal with all of life’s and his own complexities, ambiguities and contradictions. Showing MLK as a real (i.e. flawed) person just highlights how extraordinary he was.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book, well researched. You will learn something new about King even if you have read other books previously about his life.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revised and cross-published on The Avocado

Jonathan Eig's King: A Life is the latest biography of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Eig, previously a biographer of Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson, notes that "King's life and lessons are often smoothed and polished beyond recognition," creating a saintly image that people of all political persuasions - radical organizers, milquetoast liberals, even mendacious conservatives - have tried claiming as their own. None of this actually grapples with King's beliefs, which balanced progressive theology, traditional Black Baptist oratory, social democratic reformist ideas and unwavering Christian faith. Nor does it account for King's deep unpopularity in his lifetime, with conservatives smearing him as a communist, liberals fretting that his tactics incited violence and Black radicals who felt he had "one foot in the cotton field and another in the White House." Eig seeks to reintroduce us to King the Man, a flawed individual riven by inner conflict and self-doubt, but also an extraordinary leader, organizer and spokesman for his cause.

Eig's book spends a lot of time sketching King's personal relationships, starting with his father Martin Luther King Sr. A popular Atlanta priest with strong memories of growing up in the post-Reconstruction South, Daddy King's domineering personality cast a long shadow and provided a forbidding example to his son. Though King considered becoming a teacher, studying at Morehouse College, he eventually chose the priesthood, attending graduate school in Boston and marrying Coretta Scott over his father's objections. In 1954, King was assigned to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama, where he soon gained a reputation as an uncommonly powerful orator. Those who knew King by reputation were disarmed first by his relatively short stature, then by his informal, jocular style which won him many admirers. Not long after arriving in Montgomery, though, King found himself in the limelight, when the NAACP's Rosa Parks initiated a bus boycott that helped kick off the modern Civil Rights Movement.

King's leadership of the Boycott gained him a national reputation, though as Eig stresses he was only one of many organizers, from Parks to NAACP leader E.D. Nixon, who carried it to its conclusions. King wrestled with the burdens and pleasures of his newfound notoriety. On the one hand, he was feted in the press and lionized by Black leaders for his courage and oratory; but he and his family were targeted with arrest, harassment, death threats and several assassination attempts (one in Harlem, where he was stabbed in the chest by a deranged woman). King developed close friendships with fellow minister Ralph Albernathy, who helped him cofound the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Stanley Levison, a white progressive whose ties to the Communist Party earned King no end of grief. But he also clashed, not only with radicals like Malcolm X but allies like Birmingham organizer Fred Shuttleworth, who feuded with King over tactics and resented his outsized media coverage. And his relationship with Coretta often grew strained; Coretta, who had aspired to be a singer, wasn't fond of her husband's insistence that she serve as a stay-at-home wife, and eventually began finding ways to involve herself in the Movement's actions.

Eig provides lively sketches of the highpoints of the Civil Rights Movement, from the confrontations in Montgomery and Birmingham to the March on Washington, amusingly depicted in novelistic style through the perspective of onlookers (including King's police guard, who fidgets with the microphone during King's speech). He shows that King's worldview wasn't easily classified; an admirer of progressive theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr and Harry Emerson Fosdick, he also incorporated Gandhi's tactics of nonviolence and Black community organizing to his work, creating an admixture of ideas that defied easy classification. While he described himself as "more socialistic than capitalistic" to Coretta, he balked at the materialism of Marxist thought and saw it more useful as a critique than a basis for action. Perhaps this accounts for his ability to win allies across the political spectrum, from mainstream politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and Lyndon Johnson to radicals like Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture, who butted heads with King over his "Black Power" slogan but viewed him with admiration as an "amazing, incredible, inspiring" leader who provided a generation of activists "their first real act of self-affirmation."

While Taylor Branch's three-volume biography depicts King's relationships with politicians and the media in fine grain detail, Eig makes heavy use of recently available documents, from oral histories to FBI files and White House tapes, to reconstruct King's life. We're reminded again of Hoover's campaign against the man he dubbed America's "top alley cat," his connivance with Kennedy and Johnson in harassing and wiretapping King and the infamous "suicide letter" which, Eig shows, contributed to King's periodic bouts of depression. Eig deals fairly with discussions of King's near-compulsive infidelity, particularly his long-term relationship with SCLC's Education Director Dorothy Cotton; though Coretta never acknowledged King's affairs, the evidence is strong and damning. To Eig's credit, though, he doesn't use this information to sensationalize or downgrade King; it's a part of his life that's explored and placed in context, without undue stress.

Indeed, King's actions weren't always admirable. Bayard Rustin, often criticized King for his aversion to conflict, a paradoxical trait for such a forceful protest leader. Rustin, who contributed mightily to the SCLC's founding and the March on Washington, spoke from experience as King distanced himself from Rustin, both an ex-communist and a homosexual, under political pressure. Although women were "the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement" in organizing grassroots support for marches and protests, King often insisted upon pushing them into the background; at the March on Washington, he did not allow a single woman speaker. Nonetheless, Coretta found her voice, influenced King to become a more outspoken and inclusive leader, and soon became a speaker and activist in her own right - never wavering in her loyalty to Martin despite their sometimes-rocky private life.

Throughout Eig's book, there's a judicious attempt to measure King's accomplishments and failings. He's shown as someone who learned the hard way that successful demonstrations organized around a specific issue rather than generalities; hence the failure of his 1962 campaign in Albany, Georgia. And that his media savvy allowed him to monopolize press coverage of the Movement, to the detriment and resentment of many allies, who sometimes mocked him as "De Lawd." His commitment to nonviolence led Malcolm X and others to repudiate him, framing nonviolence as cowardice rather than strength; his cooperation with political leaders made him suspect on the Far Left, many of whom considered him an Establishment sellout. This might tally with the sanitized King modern readers are familiar with, less so with the man whose Letter from Birmingham Jail excoriated "white moderates" as a major obstacle to progress, who advocated for slavery reparations and universal healthcare, who remarked that "most Americans are unconscious racists" and that white hopes that Black protests would fade before resolving the root causes of poverty and racism were "an illusion of the damned."

Yet while King shared much in common with Malcolm, Carmichael and the Black Panthers, his fundamental optimism never wavered. He maintained the importance of forging alliances with whites to overcome prejudice, and was idealistic enough to envision an America where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," a claim which led Malcolm to contrast his "Dream" with the "Nightmare" faced by African-Americans in everyday life. Certainly, King's hopefulness struck many radicals, Black and white, as ineffectual in the face of Vietnam and ongoing repression; he did not envision the wholesale revolution many advocated. Yet King's idealism should not be confused with naivety; he recognized full well that the only way to achieve his Dream was through constant pressure, be it speeches, boycotts, protests or other forms of direct action. And that only such force, nonviolent though King hoped it would be, could reform American society and government enough to make it live up to its stated ideals of equality under the law.

King's activism achieved apotheosis with the Selma protests of March 1965, which humiliated Alabama Governor George Wallace and steeled Lyndon Johnson's resolve to pass the Voting Rights Act, leading to the President pronouncing "We shall overcome" to an awestruck Congress. Yet even as King achieved this triumph, events pushed beyond his control. Race riots in Watts, and later Newark and Detroit, demonstrated that liberal reform could only offer so much solution to the poverty and discrimination faced by Black Americans - especially in northern cities, where de facto segregation proved particularly hard to uproot. After being pelted by rocks during a campaign in Chicago, King remarked that "the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate." And the Vietnam War, which steadily escalated under Johnson, struck at the core of King's pacifist beliefs. While he made some cautious criticisms of the war in 1965, he was reluctant to break with the President who'd done so much to support his cause. But by 1967, the conflict had escalated enough that King felt it was no longer possible to ignore. By speaking out against "one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought," King effectively broke ties with the White House - and embraced many of the radicals who'd mocked him as too moderate.

King was assassinated in April 1968, while supporting sanitation strikers in Memphis and preparing for a Poor People's Campaign more extensive than his previous March on Washington. Eig doesn't address the lingering conspiracy theories around King's death, merely noting that J. Edgar Hoover was angry only that King's death made him a martyr, that James Earl Ray was affiliated with a terrorist group which had targeted the SCLC in the past, and that the riots following his death only steeled conservatives in their resolve that King was a violence-inciting hypocrite. If Jonathan Eig's book isn't as detailed as Taylor Branch or David Garrow's books, it's still valuable for reminding us about how Martin Luther King was once one of America's most divisive figures - and also one of its most dynamic, important and impactful ones. When Eig calls King "one of America's Founding Fathers," in demanding that the United States live up to its ideals, there's more than a grain of truth - and his excellent, highly-readable book is worthy of his subject.

[Brandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

King is a thorough and detailed profile of Martin Luther King Jr. Jonathan Eig’s level of research is truly impressive and I learned a lot about MLK from this biography that I didn’t know before.

I listened to most of King on audio — Once again, Dion Graham did an excellent job, highlighting why he is one of my favorite narrators.

From the epilogue of King, Eig shares the following in closing and I’ve been thinking about this since I finished the book earlier this week. It’s especially worth thought and consideration today, a day dedicated to honoring MLK:

“Our simplified celebration of King comes at a cost. It saps the strength of his philosophical and intellectual contributions. It undercuts his power to inspire change. Even after Americans elected a Black man as president and after that president, Barack Obama, placed a bust of King in the Oval Office, the nation remains racked with racism, ethno-nationalism, cultural division, residential and educational segregation, economic inequality, violence, and a fading sense of hope that government, or anyone, will ever fix those problems.

Where do we go from here? In spite of the way America treated him, King still had faith when he asked that question. Today, his words might help us make our way through these troubled times, but only if we actually read them; only if we embrace the complicated King, the flawed King, the human King, the radical King; only if we see and hear him clearly again, as America saw and heard him once before.

“Our very survival," he wrote, "depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

[Chet · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a long time to read King: A Life…about three weeks, which is much longer than it probably should have taken. It wasn’t that the book was boring. Far from it. In fact, Jonathan Eig’s new biography is much more interesting and exciting than most in the genre. It took me so long because I had to put it down after every chapter or two to absorb what I had read and think about things. I had a rudimentary knowledge of who Martin Luther King was from learning about it in school. I knew that King was about peaceful protest, equality and freedom…and I knew that he was assassinated. Beyond that, I didn’t really know much and to be honest, I probably only knew that much because I grew up in Memphis. Schools don’t spend a lot of time on civil rights in general (mainly during February for obvious reasons), but what little is taught revolves around King. The reason for this is that many people feel that the Civil Rights Movement doesn’t matter much anymore because racism is no longer a problem. This is far from the truth, especially in the southern United States.

Jonathan Eig has authored a biography of a great man who was flawed, uncertain and afraid. King was the leader of a movement that brought about change in a country that fought (and still fights) change with every fiber of it’s being. He worked with other great men and women to secure rights for black Americans that many never thought possible. He didn’t always do the right thing and made missteps along the way. Eig doesn’t gloss over King’s mistakes and the book is all the better for it because it humanizes a man who ultimately became a mythic figure who is perceived by many to be “perfect”, which is far from the truth. Eig presents King as a human who is as flawed as the rest of us but was able to do great things in spite of that, which is what King would have wanted in my opinion. Many people will look to things like King’s adultery and try to diminish his accomplishments (just like the FBI did). This is a flawed argument because King never claimed to be perfect and his personal failures have little or nothing to do with his accomplishments for society as a whole. He was not a messiah and never claimed to be. He simply worked to inspire people and in that he succeeded completely and without question.

This is not the first biography of MLK and it certainly won’t be the last, but it will likely be known as the best. King: A Life is exhaustively researched and includes interviews with people who were there, recently declassified FBI files and previously available information. To get the most from the book, I would recommend taking the time to digest what you read. While it is extremely well-written and flows in such a way that you want to continue reading, I would encourage you to put it down every so often to reflect on just what happened during the 50’s and 60’s in the United States. Think about the injustices that occurred and are still occurring today. Feel for the people who have suffered and feel pride in the people who stood up for what was right in the face of impossible odds. A much as this may be simply an interesting biography, it is more than that. This is a testament to the man who gave his entire life over to making the world a better place as well as the people who helped him. This is a book that should make you uncomfortable, sad, angry and afraid. This is a book that should remind you of the difference between right and wrong. This is also a book that should give you hope and inspiration. Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of King: A Life.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Endowed with the twin gifts of the ability to craft his subject's life into readable prose and caring deeply about the subject and his story, Jonathan Eig is a quintessential biographer. His treatment of Muhammad Ali was comprehensive and memorable. With King and Ali, Eig has recently gravitated toward larger-than-life subjects, so the fruits of his labor have tended to resemble the doorstop, but the readability and flow of this prose will have the reader finishing these works sooner than he is ready to let go of the subject.

In King's case, Eig's book is so long because of the staggering amount of research the author performed. About a quarter of the book's length consists of notes and acknowledgments. The latter essay was impressively extensive and movingly written. More than 200 people were interviewed, each of whom is listed, and the author reviewed "tens of thousands of pages of newly released and newly discovered archival documents," including new documents recently released by the FBI.

Those FBI documents are pictures of a simpler time. J. Edgar Hoover wanted nothing more than to prove that King was a communist or, barring that, under the influence of communists. It seems that that effort was not successful. But it is quaint, isn't it, to think of an FBI director taking for granted that exposing a civil-rights leader's communist sympathies would matter. (So, too, is it quaint to reflect on the idea of television and newspaper reporters knowing of King's infidelity and refusing to report on it because such subjects were just not discussed in media then.) Today, the focus of such comprehensive surveillance would probably shrug and flip off the camera: "So what if I am a communist?" In King's time, which overlapped a little with Joseph McCarthy's, publicly aligning oneself with communists (especially Communists) was career suicide. (Ellen Schrecker's Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America is an excellent backgrounder.) King seemed to tread lightly in this area, but only to the extent that complacency would have undermined his work. In any event, no true communist would have chosen King for his standard bearer. King, after all, demanded only equality of opportunity. The Communist Party would never have accepted a leader who advocated anything short of equality of outcome.

In our time, communism and marital affairs may not be celebrated, but nor do they exactly raise eyebrows. However, a real shadow hangs over King. According to an FBI report, a woman was anally raped in King's Washington, D.C. hotel room by a pastor while "King looked on, laughed, and offered advice." The quoted language was handwritten over an otherwise typewritten report. The report, which was released last year, summarizes a recording that will be released in 2027.

Eig does not hide his skepticism and suggests that the recording will not substantiate the report. Considering King's life and body of work, it is hard not to share Eig's opinion. But if anything has the power to undo the reputation of the first Black person to be memorialized in the nation's capital, it is this. Eig expertly treated the tension that arose between King and the Black Power movement in the 1960s. With colorblindness having been cast aside as either passé or even racist by the Black Power movement's successors, a case can be made that King's philosophy of optimism and universal brotherhood is losing its battle with an obsessively racialized culture of victimhood. The modern-day opponents of King's dream would leap at the opportunity to write out of history the celebration of the content of our character as the boring ramblings of an abettor to rape. Let us hope that they will not have that chance.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://wp.me/p4dW55-1o0

Jonathan Eig's "King: A Life" was published early last year to nearly instant acclaim and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Biography earlier this year.  Eig is a journalist and author previously best-known for his biographies "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig" (2005) and "Ali: A Life" (2017).

Eig's biography of King is the first book built upon a towering base of newly released documents including thousands of pages of White House and FBI transcripts, oral histories recorded by MLK's father and wife and interviews with more than 200 members of King's orbit and inner-circle.

Although this biography is substantial, with 557 pages of text, it could easily have been much longer. But while ideal biographies are generally a judicious balance of colorful, eloquent prose and incisive, penetrating history, Eig has largely eschewed the former in favor of a searing focus on the latter: on King's persona, the daunting challenges of his time, and the resulting cause-and-effect.

In this respect, Eig exhibits the investigative and analytical tendencies of a journalist rather than the literary inclinations of a poet. But King's life does not easily lend itself to quaint scene-setting or mesmerizing one-liners; significant stretches of his life prove heavy and dark rather than light and uplifting. Eig is adroit, however, at magnificently capturing King's very best, and his most dramatic, moments.

No reader will soon forget Eig's description of the eighteen-year-old's entrancing cadence delivering his first sermon, the utterly enthralling chapter devoted to MLK's 1963 "dream" speech or his subject's struggle to balance opposition to the Vietnam War with his thirst for long-overdue civil rights.

Eig also manages to paint a nicely balanced, and incredibly human, portrait of King. MLK's courage, eloquence and indomitable spirit are balanced against a curious tendency toward plagiarism and, more problematic, a resolute inability to remain faithful to his wife. Unfortunately, King's innermost self seems largely inaccessible to external scrutiny, so readers are left with the sense that he is unlikely to ever be fully understood.

In Eig's apparent quest for literary efficiency, he frequently misses the opportunity to more fully introduce important characters such as Andrew Young, Malcolm X and Thurgood Marshall - among others. And the book ends just five pages after King's assassination, so regrettably missing is a serious appraisal of his impact on the nation or the arc of justice, an assessment of how his legacy has evolved, or any sense of curiosity for how King might view the current political and social climate.

Overall, however, Jonathan Eig's "King: A Life" is a sober and reflective examination of a heroic but flawed civil rights figure. With new insights into FBI surveillance, Coretta Scott King's thoughts and a nuanced look at MLK's relationship with JFK and LBJ, there is much to be appreciated about this book. Barring a major revelation from the last round of FBI files slated for release in 2027, Eig's book seems destined to be definitive biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the foreseeable future.

Overall rating: 4½ stars

[Anita Pomerantz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thoroughly researched and carefully compiled biography. I learned so much about the civil rights movement, and I appreciated the education. I also really appreciated that the author interviewed so many living people to compile the narrative. All that being said, for some reason, Martin Luther King didn't completely come to life for me until the very final chapters.

Excellent from a historical and educational perspective. Good from a reading engagement perspective.

My hat is off to the author. He deserves a lot of credit for his extensive research and caring approach to the subject matter.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped me realize how radical Martin Luther King Jr. was, and the radicalism he would inspire..

[ali (hiatus) garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow.

pick this up. NOW.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warning, this review gets a little preachy, which is kind of fitting. But if that's not your thing I get it. I didn't intend this review to go that way but fuck it here we are. TLDR: It's a great book, you should read it.


The life of Dr. King was integrally tied to the civil rights movement, therefore it would be impossible to describe one without the other. Eig did an amazing job portraying just how difficult it must have been for the black community, not only in the push for equality and desegregation, but just simply to live in a country that seemingly resents their mere existence. They were at best, looked over and disregarded, and at worst consciously and murderously despised simply for having dark skin relative to the rest of the population. Using King as a vehicle, Eig did a marvelous job of demonstrating the vitriolic hatred that faced black people and the monumental task that the civil rights movement faced to overcome such hate each and every day. Which makes their accomplishments seem even more incredible than they already are. Which, admittedly, my surprise reveals my ignorance on the subject. I am not ashamed to admit that because our education system fucking sucks when it comes to things like this.

“In those schools named for King, and in almost every school in America, King’s life and lessons are often smoothed and polished beyond recognition. Young people hear his dream of brotherhood and his wish for children to be judged by the content of their character, but not his call for fundamental change in the nation’s character, not his cry for an end to the triple evils of materialism, militarism, and racism.” 

Without consciously choosing to, most of us middle class white people will never know about the true extent of the inhumane treatment of the black community. Stefan Zweig has taught me to beware of pity, but nonetheless my heart goes out to all of those people in this country today that are still experiencing even a fraction of such hate and disenfranchisement. Which, I know, is ultimately fucking meaningless. Virtue signaling is pathetic pandering and accomplishes nothing other than to stroke one's moral ego and let them say “Oh aren’t I so high and mighty, look how fuckin righteous I am”. The feelings of being lost in desperation, oppressed and ignored, targeted and profiled are things I will never understand fully and it shames me to know that so many people still experience such pain daily. Bringing such thoughts and feelings into the forefront of the reader's mind, however, is an important, maybe the most important, feature of this book. Pity is usually counterproductive and patronizing, but knowledge, empathy, and awareness is irreplaceable if we really want lasting change and a better future.


King, as well as the other major civil rights leaders of the day, truly had their work cut out for them. Several times while reading, I stopped and said out loud, "goddamn dude, that's fucked". As I said before, Eig's writing does a great job of demonstrating the struggle in a way that truly conveys "struggle". They fought against the exact same rhetoric we see today, none of it very good rhetoric either to be honest. It was lazy then and it's lazy now. Co Opting/Reversing slogans, playing the victim, deliberate straw manning, ad hominem, statistical manipulation. It's unsettling just how little the arguments and themes against radical justice have changed over 60 years. The sad part though is that it still seems to work. Hell, it used to work on me. A prime example as to why reading uncomfortable history, like this, is so important to a good education.


It is also impossible to talk about King without also talking about nonviolence, and his, literally religious, commitment to it. I am aware of, and have read books about, the tragic events that took place in Wilmington, Tulsa, Rosewood, numerous lynchings and hate mobs, etc. Which, again, I had to find out on my own.  I have to say, the more I learn about historic, and unfortunately sometimes not so historic, racial tensions, the more I feel surprised that type of shit didn't happen more often and on a grander scale. I believe that King's strict dedication to nonviolence and religious appeal is likely the reason such tensions didn't explode into an all out war. "Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.” Whatever else may be said about King, he certainly wasn't a Saint as he may sometimes be depicted, his commitment to nonviolent protest and reform likely saved the country from itself in ways we can hardly appreciate. 


A true "revolution of values" is required to achieve tangible results and justice at a deeper level. This biography and the life of Dr. King puts much into perspective, not just pertaining to race, but all forms of hate and injustice. We as individuals must undergo our own revolution of values. What makes up a society but the people within it? What creates the values of a society and a culture but the values of said individuals that comprise it? Values such as: Wisdom: Which allows us to know right from wrong, Justice: The demand for equal treatment and genuine respect for all people, and Love: "Love is the only force that can capture hate." Can we, as individuals, be reconciled with “Wisdom, Justice, and Love”? Only when the answer is yes will we be able to change society as a whole.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apparently this is the first significant biography of MLK written in the last 35 years. That just seems crazy to me. Eig’s update incorporates new information from many interviews with people who knew King (although as time goes on there are fewer remaining to speak with), newly-available transcripts from FBI surveillance, and an unpublished autobiography from King’s father.

Most of us may believe that we already know the story of MLK, and therefore reading a new biography may not be worthwhile, but Eig’s book makes a number of important contributions.

As the author points out, the common perception of King is that he was a martyr and some kind of saint. This view makes him seem unreal to us, and also by extension fosters the belief that we cannot do the things that he did—that real change will not happen until the next superhuman saint comes along. But this very personal biography shows that King was just a man like the rest of us. And like the rest of us he had flaws. Eig shows how Hoover’s FBI tapped his phones, found evidence of marital infidelity and then weaponized these flaws to impede the civil rights movement. Following the famous “I Have a Dream” speech in DC the FBI marked him as a threat to the country despite finding no evidence of communist ties, and eventually convinced LBJ to withdraw support as well.

Eig also demonstrates that the source and motivation for King’s fight for racial justice was his Christian faith. He believed in the radical love that Jesus espoused—and commands of his followers. For King, the fight for justice was an extension of this love. He said that “justice is love in action.” Thus King urged demonstrators to commit to nonviolence and show love to their opponents. It was his Christian faith that propelled him to continue on this path that he knew would eventually result in his martyrdom for the cause.

Another important feature of Eig’s account is to highlight that King’s goal was not the tame color-blindness that some have imagined. Despite the commonly repeated phrases in his “Dream” speech, he was more radical than he has often been portrayed. He believed and preached against the war in Vietnam (how could one preach nonviolence at home and support that war abroad?) and advocated sweeping government programs to help the poor of all races.

Another remarkable finding in this biography is the ideas of King and Malcom X were more similar than is popularly believed. Arthur Haley interviewed King and published an article in Playboy in which King seems to be critical and dismissive of Malcom X. But Eig uncovered the original recordings which actually reveal that King’s view of Malcolm X was much more respectful and nuanced.

Overall, an excellent, well-written, and informative read.


Of course Bob wrote a great review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Edit 8/24/24]:
Joseph also wrote a great review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Porter Broyles · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read several biographies on King, but I think this one is my favorite.

I say that in part because I come from a school of thought wherein any history that is less than 50 years after the event cannot be accurately told. Those who write the history of modern events were either old enough to affected directly or know people who were affected directly by the events.

It takes 50 years or so for the emotions and biases surrounding an event to melt away to obtain an accurate presentation of the event. MLK's story is further complicated by the involvement of the US Government which buried key evidence for 50+ years. MLK Scholars are still waiting for key documents to be released in 2027.

This means that modern scholars have a treasure trove of documents unavailable to previous scholars when researching King. Eig also benefited from the fact that he had the ability to interview many of Kings family members or associates who were still alive.

So what in particular about this book did I enjoy?

Eig had access to journals and documents of Kings childhood and youth that included details that I was not familiar with. This continued into his academic career wherein Eig went into more details about how various theologians or ideas influenced his life. King embraced one of his professors mantras for sermonizing "Prove, paint, and pursuade." During a speach, King sought to prove his point. To paint an image as to what that meant or what it could be. Then to pursuade the audience to act upon his message.

He also talked about how different people influenced his theology and philosophy. For example, how Nietsche almost convinced him that a Christian God of Love could not exist, but that Ghandi showed him that it could. About how King took Ghandi's non-violence ideology and merged it with Niebuhr's Christian realism to create “a Niebuhrian stratagem of power”. How he was a major critic of Paul Tillich, but that in critiquing Tillich, his theology ended up being an adaptation of Tillich rather than a repudiation of him.

I personally enjoyed the last section of the book when he talked about his relationship with LBJ and his growing criticism of the Vietnam War. Eig chronicles how King lost influence after his speech in Chicago condemning the war. A speech written largely by Vincent Harding.

(On an aside, I knew Dr Harding for several years as I attended a school where he taught.)

[Moonkiszt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the books I've read about MLK, this was the one from which I took away the most. . . accessible, background given when I needed and expected it, not pushing in interrupting narrative storylines. Well-organized, well-researched and even-handed in its reporting. Nothing held back, warts admitted and located when known.

Jonathan Eig has provided an excellent study of a man we all need to study and to who we need to pay attention. . .Martin Luther King, Jr's message is just as urgent as ever, and the author does not shut the door claiming he's said it all. Each generation and all individuals need to to revisit what has happened, pin it up and compare it to what is now happening, and do our best to anticipate what will yet happen. Take the lessons, messages, words of wisdom that issued from that mighty voice: predictions, warnings and calls to action. This book is an ideal tool to assist in that undertaking.

Listen up, and carry on, working toward the good. We need to be better.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a solid read. Eig did a much better job than other King biographers with good pacing and no deviations from a clear linear timeline.

King's origin story was also well done and a full quarter of the biography was spent on his childhood.

There were not as many contemporary quotes or touching moments though as I would expect from an otherwise top notch biography.

4 stars. Solid read

[Bruce Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve fallen too far behind in my write-ups so it’s time for an abridged review.

A remarkable, illuminating (on several levels), eminently readable examination of Martin Luther King's life and times.

Author Jonathan Eig (author of the highly regarded book "Ali") makes his purpose clear from the start. His book, he says, seeks to recover the real man from the gray mist of hagiography. In the process of canonizing King, we’ve defanged him, replacing his complicated politics and philosophy with catchphrases that suit one ideology or another. We’ve heard the recording of his “I Have a Dream” speech so many times we don’t really hear it anymore.

He succeeds brilliantly in this. The Martin Luther King, Jr, shown here is not a saint but a deeply flawed and conflicted man. The book moves briskly through the stages of his life, from his education and early experiences (including, remarkably, this: "ten-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. dressed in slave rags and sung with his church choir at the premier of the film Gone with the Wind) the factors that shaped his formative years to his entry into the ministry, his close brush with death when he was stabbed, his exhausting efforts to secure civil rights, and the work he began to address poverty in the United States. Throughout the book we see the many demons King wrestled with, the profound self-doubt, fear, exhaustion, frustration, uncertainty about what to do (Bayard Rustin said King’s biggest “ironic” flaw as a protest leader was that he hated conflict), anger, and even a growing sense that he would be killed as JFK had been (”When he learned Kennedy was dead, King sat in silence for a long time. ‘This is what is going to happen to me also, he finally said.” Reading this, I was reminded of the dark presentiments Lincoln had before he was killed.) We also see how extraordinary he was, how broad his vision and deep his determination.

I’m not going too rehash what others have written about “King.” It was universally and deservedly regarded as one of the best books of the year. Instead, I’ll quickly note what struck me as I read — the things I knew and forgot, vaguely remembered, remembered wrong, or didn’t know at all. I won’t differentiate one from another here.

Predictably, given what most people now know of King’s life, much of the book has to do with Dr. King’s relationship to women: his mother, girlfriends, wife, and colleagues. Dr. King loved his wife dearly but he had many, many affairs, some of them lasting for years. It wasn’t much of a secret to those around him: His colleagues certainly knew, and the journalists of the time protected King’s privacy out of what Eig calls “standards of fairness and decency, at a time when even mild swear words never appeared in print or on the air.”

Then there was J. Edgar Hoover who became utterly obsessed with Dr. King. The extent of his animus is startling. King was followed, photographed, his phone lines tapped and recorded. Hoover regularly saw that the sordid details were leaked to the press, sometimes in the form of tape recordings that were edited to make the tapes as salacious as possible. To his deep frustration, the press didn’t bite. It was a very different world then -- in many ways.

The book covers the difficult dynamics between various parties in the civil rights movement: NAACP, SCLC, Malcolm X, etc. It was all surprisingly personal. At each step there was tension. Was King the right person for the job? (He certainly wasn't at all sure himself.) Should he focus his energy solely on the South or should he also become active in the North? By expanding his speeches to problems of poverty in America was he diluting the racial nature of the movement? Was his speaking out so forcibly against the Vietnam War alienating allies and important politicians (LBJ among them) and making the struggle harder?

Some lines from the book suggest what was going on in these arenas:

This, from Eig’s description of Dr. King addressing Congress: “ ‘Rarely, in any time, does an issue lay bare the heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or security, but rather to the values and the purposes and meaning of our beloved Nation.’ The audience of legislators applauded. He paused and delivered each of his next four words deliberately: ‘And … we … shall … overcome!’ Members of the audience jumped to their feet, applauding.” Utterly unimaginable today.

“Rank and file Negro sentiment is against Martin,” [Bayard] Rustin said, “because they are saying, ‘China is not our problem. We ain’t got no freedom here. What the fuck is wrong with King. “While our Black brothers are ` in Vietnam, we’re getting gassed for trying to vote in Canton, Mississippi.”

“The same liberals who helped fight Jim Crow in the South declined to address issues of job discrimination, housing segregation, and police assaults on Black communities in the North… because so many Americans thought it did not need to change…” Shocked by the level of racial violence in Illinois, King said, “I think the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate.”

The book powerfully reminds (and I’m convinced we do need to be reminded) us of how terrible the Jim Crow South was. Eig reports on numerous shootings, bombings, and beatings. One horrifying example among many: A Black female student at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee was abducted and raped. Four young white men admitted to the crime. Yet only when students at the Black university announced a campaign of “passive resistance,” including a boycott of classes and mass prayer meetings, were charges filed in the case.”

“King also said his view of white Americans had changed. After his experience in Chicago, after seeing how white people in the North resisted appeals to integrate their schools and neighborhoods, he had concluded that only a small part of white America supported racial justice. ‘Most Americans,’ he said, ‘are unconscious racists.’ “

And finally, this: “ 'Toward the end of that afternoon,’ [King] said, ‘I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare.’ ”

Eig's book is a powerful corrective to the impulse White America in particular has long had to view Martin Luther King, Jr., as a saint. As he succinctly puts it elsewhere in the book, "In hallowing King we have hollowed him." For me, by portraying King with all his flaws, gifts, mistakes, and accomplishments, Eig does more than simply set the record straight. By sanctifying King we unconsciously tell ourselves that most of the work has been done, that he did most of what he set out to do even though his life was tragically cut short. King's life, fully viewed, shouldn't be understood as the end point of America's journey to racial and economic justice but a foundation on which to build.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the latest biography on the life and myriad contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr. started out a bit slow (rather dry as well) for me, I’m pleased to report it didn’t stay that way for long.

Jonathan Eig did an extraordinary job of speaking to many family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and other individuals - some who were incredibly close with King, while others merely saw him spoke. And what an incredible experience that must have been! You can pretty much feel the passion and the pride Black Americans at finally got to experience, through Eig’s interviews with attendees of his March on Washington speech. It’s very powerful, to say the least.

Make no mistake about it though - this is not the sugar-coated, “I Have a Dream” perfect version of MLK, Jr. that most of us are familiar with from any of our K-12 or even higher education studies. The King Eig presents is often insecure, often anxious, and very much flawed.

Given the weight of what he was carrying on his shoulders (the entirety of the Civil Rights movement really could have been destroyed by one really bad move or speech by him, which would make anyone constantly anxious) and the idea that he was continually living under the threat of violence/attack, or worse, assassination, would make even the most straightforward person a nuanced character.

While I was aware that the FBI had issues with the Civil Rights leaders and repeatedly resorted to bugging their phones (attempting to either discredit them morally or as Communist sympathizers) I had no idea just how deeply the animosity between J. Edgar Hoover and King ran (King didn’t seem to, unfortunately, either).

It was also depressing to learn that LBJ bore so much enmity toward King as well, simply based on Hoover’s personal grudge (one might very easily say obsession). After all, he did introduce the Civil Rights Act of 1964, intended to end discrimination in employment and prohibit segregation in public areas, followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited literacy testing and other well-known measures taken to prevent/restrict Black voter registration and voting, and finally, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, outlawing discrimination in housing.

It’s very disappointing to learn that the same president who, hands down, passed the most progressive and important anti-racism and anti-segregation laws to this day could have been so flippant about practicing what he preached, and not doing more to ensure King’s safety (along with other prominent CR leaders) - especially when they traveled into the more hostile regions of the country for boycotts, protests, and speeches.

It was also difficult to learn about the seemingly endless marital affairs that King carried out with women all across the country while claiming to be a family man and utterly devoted and respectful to Coretta. Especially when she was the more intellectual of the two when they first met, and the one who had really gotten him interested in the Movement.

So to read things like Hosea Williams’s account of King’s “cruel treatment of her”, witnessing on “more than one occasion” Martin ordering Coretta, “Shut up and go ahead in the back room!”, Williams said he heard Martin yell at Coretta. ”She would get up quietly and go on back. Martin had told her many times” was not easy to read.

Neither was it particularly enjoyable to read advice he gave in a monthly column in Ebony magazine, which spoke of his “Christian values” (that largely seemed to show as total contradictions in his own personal life, especially in regard to adultery).

I get that this was a different time, but I’m still frustrated at the way any man, Black or white, is essentially exonerated no matter how obvious his philandering was. Evidently it wasn’t even the man’s fault for cheating on his wife, as King ”advised a woman with an unfaithful husband to seek counseling but also to consider whether her nagging or inattentiveness had contributed to her husband’s desire to have an affair.”

Ugh, momentary personal rant: what about a woman who feels her husband never makes any time for her and never makes her feel loved? Is she justified in seeking out an affair to find that missing part of her marriage elsewhere, since clearly her husband couldn’t be trusted to be attentive to her needs?

No, of course not. I know, I know, I can’t hold this against Dr. King (not really) given the prevailing mood of the times. It doesn’t make it any less disappointing though, when you always hope that great men who you’ve looked up to will be the exception to this rule.

Aside from what I’ve already said, it was a thoroughly exhaustive and well-written, enjoyable (albeit often heartbreaking) new narrative to add to the collection of MLK, Jr. biographies and works, which as the author himself said, hadn’t been updated in quite some time.

Highly, highly recommend.

[Roger DeBlanck · Rating 5 out of 5]

We need new studies on transcendent leaders so that we will never forget how their lives shaped history and how their legacies continue to impact our world with optimism for an improved tomorrow. Jonathan Eig’s unputdownable new biography of Martin Luther King Jr is the first full-length work to appear in decades about one of America’s most revered figures, and it is a commendable addition to the vast literature on MLK.

As I consumed Eig’s rapidly paced narrative, I appreciated how he avoided the easy temptation to glorify King as Christlike. Instead, he focuses on King’s lifelong commitment to the Christian ethics of love and compassion and of finding purpose and redemption through acts of undeserved suffering for the cause of helping others, which for King constituted the divine test for humans of fulfilling God’s expectations of us.

King’s mission to secure justice and equality for all Americans is inspiring, of course, but what can be disturbing is remembering how King’s efforts met perilous resistance from hatemakers, such as the Klan, but also from disgraceful elected officials at every level of government. Although he had a cooperative relationship with President Johnson that influenced the passage of both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, King’s enemies included governors, mayors, police chiefs, and members of Congress who wanted him gone.

When studying MLK’s life and work, trying to put in perspective the degree of cruelty and ruthlessness he faced can feel overwhelming and even numbing. I found it both shameful and sickening to recollect how segregationists were proud to defend themselves as justified in utilizing violence and murder without any fear of intervention from the law so that they could entrench racism and white supremacy in their states, counties, cities, and courts to perpetuate terror and oppression against Black people.

As King expanded his mission for attaining civil rights to include confronting the evils of poverty and war, he became more revolutionary in his final years with messaging that echoed Malcolm X who was assassinated three years before King suffered the same fate. In particular, King’s condemnation of the Vietnam War fractured his relationship with LBJ and drew the ire of close friends and, of course, from his sworn enemies. But what enrages me most is a reminder of how hatemakers had no inhibition about using violence against King even as he never wavered in discipline from nonviolent activism.

It is also troubling to learn from Eig’s research of newly available FBI reports how J. Edgar Hoover did everything in his power to coordinate schemes to ruin King. Hoover wanted to expose King’s extramarital affairs, and when those attempts didn’t gain traction, he spread falsehoods that branded King as a communist sympathizer intent on destroying American democracy.

I found myself at times in disbelief with contemplating how remarkable it was that King somehow survived for 13 years as leader of the Civil Rights Movement amid the relentless homicidal danger he faced on a daily basis. Every time he led an act of civil disobedience to confront the terror and injustice of racism and white supremacy, he encountered mobs of violent hatemakers wanting to harm him.

I felt a combination of admiration and sadness for King’s fearlessness and courage to face death threats and still continue to do what was right in exposing the evils of racism, poverty, and militarism. My sorrow had me fighting back tears as Eig documents King’s premonitions of how he knew he was going to die, and yet he remained steadfast to the cause of Christian love and nonviolence towards his enemies as the path to achieving a future humanity where everyone was judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

Throughout this engaging biography, my most lasting impression became Eig’s ability to compel me to reflect upon what has really changed since King’s sacrifices. Only defeatists would argue we’ve made no progress. However, the erosion of American conscience is frightening and alarming when we are forced to witness the resurgence of hate groups demanding their agenda be validated while lunatic politicians celebrate the passage of cruel, ruthless legislation that devastates peoples’ lives, particularly people of color and anyone among the poverty-stricken who King gave his life fighting for.

No different than the maniacal segregationists in MLK’s era, those in recent years who have made the proliferation of hate fashionable declare grievance and victimhood for themselves when any effort is made to extend opportunity to others who are different, vulnerable, underprivileged, disadvantaged, or exploited. As King experienced during his life, I still see too much emboldened hatred and shameless misinformation from indecent and uncivil individuals raging against how improvement of America for everyone somehow makes the rich now poor, or how a better America for everyone somehow makes those with power and privilege less equal.

Eig’s biography captures both the joy and sorrow of what remembering King requires of us, and in his epilogue he leaves us to consider this challenge: “Our simplified celebration of King comes at a cost. It saps the strength of his philosophical and intellectual contributions. It undercuts his power to inspire change. Even after Americans elected a Black man as president and after that president, Barack Obama, placed a bust of King in the Oval Office, the nation remains racked with racism, ethno-nationalism, cultural division, residential and educational segregation, economic inequality, violence, and a fading sense of hope that government, or anyone, will ever fix those problems.”

What might be most vital to take away from Eig’s new study of MLK’s life is the unsettling reminder that whenever we honor King’s achievements, we also must recognize the need to finish his unfinished work, which cost him his life. King was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, and Eig enables us to see that were King alive today he’d be on the front lines fighting to dismantle forces of hate, corruption, hypocrisy, misinformation, and injustice that are still turning us backwards, especially the rampant conniving of those in elected office doing everything in their power to undermine, reverse, and destroy MLK’s work.

[Sierra · Rating 3 out of 5]

*audiobook

[Larry (LPosse1) · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a teacher who has guided students through African American biography projects for years, I came to King: A Life by Jonathan Eig with a sense of familiarity. I’ve read countless young adult biographies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and thought I had a solid grasp of his story. But Eig’s masterful biography proved just how much more there was to learn.

That said, the book took a while to draw me in. It felt like a slow starter, and I found myself wondering at first whether it would offer anything new. But once it found its rhythm, I was hooked. Eig doesn’t simply recount King’s life — he paints a deeply human portrait of a man who was visionary yet flawed, courageous yet conflicted. This is not the sanitized version of King that often appears in textbooks; it’s a complex, three-dimensional look at a remarkable leader navigating impossible circumstances.

One of the most powerful sections for me was Eig’s examination of King’s time in Chicago — a chapter of his life that is too often glossed over. I had the privilege of hearing Eig speak at a Chicago Architecture Society event where he discussed this very topic. That evening was unforgettable, and his insights only deepened my appreciation for how he handled the Chicago chapter in the book. The sad truths he shared — about systemic racism, urban inequality, and the resistance King faced in the so-called “City of Broad Shoulders” — were tough to absorb but so important to understand.

What makes King: A Life so effective is not just the meticulous research (which is top-notch), but the emotional honesty. Eig draws on new sources and personal interviews to create what feels like the definitive King biography of our time. It compares favorably to his previous work on Muhammad Ali — another brilliant, layered book — but I’d argue this one carries even greater historical weight.

This is a biography that will challenge what you think you know and leave you with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of Martin Luther King Jr. I highly recommend it — especially to educators, history enthusiasts, and anyone who wants a fuller picture of one of the most important figures in American history.
4.5 stars Immersive Kindle/audible.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing, but not a total bust. Eig synthesizes the well-known story of King's life with new material, most importantly from unpublished memoirs by King's wife and father, and information from FBI files. If you've been following the story, there's not much new--the FBI material including the specifics about King's sexual life--are presented in Beverly Gage's biography of J. Edgar Hoover, for example. The most problematic aspect of the book, though, is the thin sense of the nuances of African American history and a failure to make use of some of the best recent scholarship in the field. His treatment of Rosa Parks, for example, borders on the old "tired Black woman" stereotype of the committed activist established by Danielle McGuire's At the Dark End of the Street as well as various Parks biographies.

Just can't recommend it on balance. Taylor Branch's three volume history of America in the King Years remains the standard, while David Garrow's slightly outdated book remains the best one-volume.