“King: A Life” reads like an epic novel and Shakespearean tragedy. Jonathan Eig is a new writer for me, and I’m already a fan. He used creative writing elements to bring to life Dr. King’s story. The cinematic quality of Eig’s writing made for a rich, sensory experience while reading. I felt as Harry Potter must have when dropped into Dumbledore’s collected memories in the Pensieve. Eig presented material from previously unpublished sources, such as an autobiography from Martin Luther King, Sr., "Daddy King"; newly released FBI recordings; as well as interviews with people still with us today who knew Dr. King well.

Eig wrote each chapter in a way that made reading this biography like a journey I wanted to take, without the dry, drudgery of a history book. Each chapter connected to others in time, but also could stand alone as a magazine article. I argued often with people long dead as I looked on undetected at our Nation's past. I had so much to say that I wrote two reviews on my blog!

The first scene opened with the first time Dr. King spoke out as an activist from the pulpit on Dec. 5, 1955. He spoke against segregation and the inhumane treatment of Black people in the South and demanded their rights as citizens of the U.S. He reminded his audience they lived in an American democracy. If they were wrong, he said, then the Constitution is wrong, the Supreme Court is wrong, and God Almighty is wrong.

Eig would revisit this moment to show the development over the course of Dr. King’s life of his personal and spiritual philosophies. He then turned to the story of Dr. King's grandparents and father in Stockbridge. His father would become a Baptist preacher who eventually took his father-in-law's place in the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Dr. King would follow in his footsteps after an education at Morehouse College and Boston University. He had been offered positions to teach college or minister in the North, but he went back to the South where he would do the most for his community.

Dr. King identified himself as a Baptist preacher first and foremost when he moved into activism. He spoke often about Christian, brotherly love and pacifism as remedies for curing the social ills of racism, segregation, and racial inequality in the U.S. He learned about the benefits of nonviolent resistance from Mahatma Gandhi when he visited India with his wife, Coretta Scott King. He also had read the work of Henry David Thoreau on civil disobedience.

His revolutionary approaches to activism would energize the civil rights movement. Dr. King would inspire people to love others as God loves us, a sort of Christian activism, or social gospel. He wanted people to look past skin color and put on God’s agape love, to hate the sin, but not the sinner. They had the moral high ground. This might explain why Dr. King saw protesters who turned to violence as looking more like the very people whose hearts they needed to break and redeem. He told his listeners often that they would need to suffer to redeem, just as Christ had on the Cross. He sought to redeem the very soul of this nation.

Dr. King would stand firm on this stance despite push-back from those who thought nonviolence weak. An end to racial injustice for all would only happen in the hearts and minds of people. Even so, he knew how unpopular his position for nonviolent resistance and pacifism in activism became in the eyes of other activists. He acknowledged the hurt when criticized in the press and within those civil rights’ groups.

Still, he had a clear, moral vision for the U.S. Like Moses in the Old Testament, Dr. King, said he had seen the fruit of his labors in a speech he gave before his assassination on April 3, 1968.

Before his death, Dr. King may have felt he had turned into “the weeping prophet” Jeremiah, with unwelcome prophecies about the racial divide in the U.S. He seemed to know he would not be here to see true change happening. He was a servant “generated by love,” not by personal power or greatness, a man misunderstood at times. But he stayed the course. He didn’t worry about his life.

While he did have his faults, Dr. King had an immense faith in God that I admire. He didn’t back down in the face of evil, even in the face of death. Some people in his life didn’t understand Dr. King’s deep faith and his conviction that God had placed this call on his life. He reminded me that the Christian life should never be a quiet, retiring, or comfortable journey.

I first encountered Jonathan Eig when I received a copy of his book on Mohammed Ali. The author has the ability to not only capture the essence of these famous Black men, but to also capture the energy and language of the time they lived in. He brings Martin Luther King’s strong oratory style to life as well as the anger and desperation of the civil rights movement.

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.

Whoa 🤯 This was a great read! It was full of information and newly released tape’s that were classified but now declassified. It told the whole story of Martin Luther King Jr. I read it for Black History Month, but just now finishing it. I wasn’t too late with finishing it and reviewing, but a little. Anyway, it was a captivating experience. I was glued to it and wanted to keep reading it all the time. It is controversial, because some might say that certain things that are written about aren’t true of him, but unfortunately, I believe they are. But I believe he was a great leader for the civil rights movement and believe he was born there in that time to do exactly what he did especially at the start of it all. He was so powerful a leader and baptist minister that I had to go listen to some of his speeches and sermons because I wanted to see if what the writer was writing about him was true. And it was. He was very bold in his speeches and sermons. He was not tall at all but had a booming voice and it became even bolder and louder as he spoke on. I believe if he could have continued in the movement as he wanted with the nonviolent approach and message, civil rights would have continued to get better not just for the African American but for us all. Because he approached it as everyone doing it as God would have us to do. Because that is what our nation was founded on, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But I am troubled about some things I learned that I didn’t believe, like I spoke of above, but I have to say He and God will discuss that. Possibly maybe already have. This book tells the whole story and leaves nothing out. It was a riveting read! I’m glad I read it! I thank #NetGalley and the publishers, Simon and Schuster, for the opportunity to read and review #MartinLutherKingALife by Jonathan Eig, with my own thoughts and personal opinions.

I enjoyed this for the history of a man that is seen by most in simple terms but there is so much behind the man that is great that new generations will have a chance to see and learn.

I’ve always had a deep respect for MLK and this just opens your eyes more by showing how he was human who made mistakes but kept his head held high.

Thanks to NetGallery and the publisher for his eArc in exchange for my honest review.

an exceptional book. well-researched, deftly narrated, insightful, and completely fascinating — my only major qualm is that its content could have been told in many less pages, as i do feel that it dragged a bit at times.

I want to thank the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the author Jonathan Eig, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced review copy of this biography..

I grew up during the 1960s, and experienced as any American did during that turbulent decade the assassinations, the Vietnam war, and racial tension over civil rights. I experienced it directly going to school in West Virginia when our schools were integrated.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an integral part of everything that happened during the 1960s, and his assassination in 1968 made him a martyr and an icon for the ages. What I knew of King was mostly from the evening network news, where he was a regular fixture, and maybe a little from the newspaper. There were many things about King the public didn't see or know about, but Jonathan Eig brings a whole new perspective on MLK in this biography, which is extremely well written and researched. I would encourage everyone to read it.

The author truly did an amazing job to tell the story of MLK from birth to his status in today's fragmented society. We read about King the man, who had many faults, temptations and doubts about his work and calling. It was the 1963 March on Washington and the "I Have a Dream" speech that gave King his national notoriety (in my opinion). It also caused the FBI and its paranoid director, J. Edgar Hoover, to look for ways to hurt King and his efforts to further civil rights. Hoover was clearly racially biased towards King, and did all he could to label him a Communist and a person out to undermine American civil order.

Reading the hardships that King and his family went through during those turbulent years of his life gave me a new sense of MLK. Likewise, the author's discussion of King's dark side--his liaisons with many different women, his smoking and drinking, his profanity and anger--all just to me demonstrate King was a man who also dealt with sin. The research and fact-checking that went in to this biography was first rate.

The book also paints a sad but powerful picture of Coretta Scott King, who stood beside her husband for his short life and contributed as much as King did but in different ways. She is almost given saint-like status in the book but deservedly so. Mrs. King worked the rest of her life to continue MLKs dream and legacy.

You can't read this biography and not think about what is still happening in the United States today regarding racism and racial tensions between Black and White. I think Dr. King would be disappointed where we are at as a society. Yes, many things are better for the contemporary Black man and woman than what their parents and grandparents didn't have in their lifetime--the right to vote, anti-discrimination laws, and so forth. But look at all the violence between police and Black victims, with the latest and most troubling event occurring in Memphis of all places (where King was assassinated) with the murder of Tyree Nichols at the hands of five Black police officers.

We are a broken nation in terms of race relations. Maybe we always have been and always will be. King did all he could in the 39 years he was alive to make the world a better place, with his nonviolent approach in following the example of Jesus Christ. Racism remains a terrible problem and all of us need to do a better job of standing up to racism wherever we might encounter such action.

Read this book. It is very powerful.

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 now looked upon 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 has lost its battle with racialized obsession. The modern-day opponents of King's dream would jump at the opportunity to write out of history the content of one's character as the boring ramblings of an abettor to rape. Let us hope that they will not have that chance.

This book was fantastic. The author used an abundance of research (interviews, memoirs, FBI files, etc) to tell a very complete story of the life of Martin Luther King Jr.

I only knew the basics of his life that they (barely) teach you in school. Learned so much about his life, his goals, his struggles and even his flaws. It's a big book but it wasn't a chore to read at all. The book is well written and I was completely focused and engaged when reading.

When this book comes out, do yourself a favor and read about this historic man.

This book was fantastic. The author used an abundance of research (interviews, memoirs, FBI files, etc) to tell a very complete story of the life of Martin Luther King Jr.

I only knew the basics of his life that they (barely) teach you in school. Learned so much about his life, his goals, his struggles and even his flaws. It's a big book but it wasn't a chore to read at all. The book is well written and I was completely focused and engaged when reading.

When this book comes out, do yourself a favor and read about this historic man.

Thanks to @netgalley and @fsgbooks for the advanced copy..
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#mlkjr #book #bookstagram #readingisfundamental #stilllearning #kingalife

This is an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary man.. Unputdownable! Jonathan Eig's writing is lively and compelling, offering new insights into the man and his legacy. No doubt it will be nominated for every major book award in its genre.. I've pre-ordered King: A Life as gifts, have added it to our high school media center order list, and recommended it to our history department head and staff. I feel privileged to have read this advance copy and will return to it again and again.

Five stars-- at least.

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.

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.