Social Sciences
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King: A Life
"Supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable . . . Eig's book is worthy of its subject." ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"[King is] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . The most compelling account of King's life in a generation." ―Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post
"No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig's sweeping and majestic new King . . . Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome." ―Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Hailed by the New York Times as "the new definitive biography," King mixes revelatory new research with accessible storytelling to offer an MLK for our times.
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation's most mourned martyr.
In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.
Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs
"[King is] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . The most compelling account of King's life in a generation." ―Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post
"No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig's sweeping and majestic new King . . . Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome." ―Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Hailed by the New York Times as "the new definitive biography," King mixes revelatory new research with accessible storytelling to offer an MLK for our times.
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation's most mourned martyr.
In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.
Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs
Editorial Reviews
"Supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable . . . The first comprehensive biography of King in three decades . . . and it supplants David J. Garrow's 1986 biography Bearing the Cross as the definitive life of King, as Garrow himself deposed recently . . . [Eig's is] a clean, clear, journalistic voice, one that employs facts the way Saul Bellow said they should be employed, each a wire that sends a current . . . Eig's book is worthy of its subject." ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"King: A Life might be described as a deeply reported psychobiography [. . .] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . Eig does a particularly nuanced job of conjuring up the mind-set of Coretta Scott King in the years before she emerged as a forceful activist in her own right . . . The most compelling account of King's life in a generation." ―Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post
"No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig's sweeping and majestic new King . . . The result is not mythology but a portrait of a man who was all too human―making his remarkable moral choices and struggles relatable to his fellow mortals. In repositioning King as one of America's true Founding Fathers, Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome." ―Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A sober and intimate portrait of King's short life . . . Eig captures the ferocity of the forces that opposed King . . . He also captures King's sense of theatre, his enormously canny ability to stage confrontations that heightened the contrast between the civil-rights movement and the people who wanted to stop it." ―Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker
"Outstanding . . . [Eig] shows who King really was behind the famous speeches and celebrity . . . Eig offers an intimate, multidimensional biography . . . Most importantly, Eig weaves Coretta Scott King's impressions of her famous husband throughout the book in ways that free her from the traditional housewife image depicted in Time magazine portraits . . . King: A Life forces readers to view King as more than a martyr, icon, or saint ― to see him for who he was, instead of who people thought he was, or wanted him to be."
"King: A Life might be described as a deeply reported psychobiography [. . .] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . Eig does a particularly nuanced job of conjuring up the mind-set of Coretta Scott King in the years before she emerged as a forceful activist in her own right . . . The most compelling account of King's life in a generation." ―Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post
"No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig's sweeping and majestic new King . . . The result is not mythology but a portrait of a man who was all too human―making his remarkable moral choices and struggles relatable to his fellow mortals. In repositioning King as one of America's true Founding Fathers, Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome." ―Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A sober and intimate portrait of King's short life . . . Eig captures the ferocity of the forces that opposed King . . . He also captures King's sense of theatre, his enormously canny ability to stage confrontations that heightened the contrast between the civil-rights movement and the people who wanted to stop it." ―Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker
"Outstanding . . . [Eig] shows who King really was behind the famous speeches and celebrity . . . Eig offers an intimate, multidimensional biography . . . Most importantly, Eig weaves Coretta Scott King's impressions of her famous husband throughout the book in ways that free her from the traditional housewife image depicted in Time magazine portraits . . . King: A Life forces readers to view King as more than a martyr, icon, or saint ― to see him for who he was, instead of who people thought he was, or wanted him to be."
Readers Top Reviews
Dr. Alan B. Albarran
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...
Susan Mather Barone
“King: A Life” reads like an epic novel and a Shakespearean tragedy. Jonathan Eig is a new writer for me, and I’m already a fan. He used creative writing elements to bring Dr. King’s story to life. 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 part 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 commands us to love them in 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. Those who fought for freedom were demanding their God-given righ...
