"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 (Book Review Editors'' Choice) " 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 "[Eig] is an indefatigable researcher, and King is based on a vast array of material, old and new . Eig offers affecting accounts of the Montgomery bus boycott, which made King a national figure; the confrontation in the streets of Birmingham between young Black demonstrators and ''Bull'' Connor''s dogs and fire hoses; and the march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery . [His] style is journalistic, with brief paragraphs driving the narrative forward . Eig devotes more attention to Coretta Scott King than previous biographers, emphasising that she was an anti-racist radical in her own right." --Eric Foner, London Review of Books "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." --Ousmane Power-Greene, The Boston Globe "Jonathan Eig''s magnificent new biography is an overdue attempt to grapple with King in all his complexity. His book will inevitably draw comparisons with America in the King Years . [ King: A Life ] is a more traditional biography, and the book benefits from its narrower focus. It gives the reader more insight into the multifaceted man himself. Eig makes [King''s] courage and moral vision seem all the more exceptional for having come from a man with ordinary flaws." -- The Economist "Eig''s monumental work, the first major biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades, challenges the image of him as a peaceful advocate of incremental change.
There''s plenty of new detail, including from recently declassified F.B.I. files, allowing King to emerge as a complex, humane figure." --J. Howard Rosier, The New York Times "Eig brilliantly portrays the many dimensions of the civil rights leader . Eig''s balanced treatment of King''s manifest greatness and his human flaws, including his sexual infidelity, turns an icon back into a man and produces a biography that will be very difficult to surpass." --Jessica T.
Mathews, Foreign Affairs "Eig is particularly effective at gently reminding readers that there are striking parallels between the way racial justice was framed in the 1950s and ''60s and the way it is framed in the 2010s and ''20s . Jonathan Eig has written a biography that points us to King at his best, to King convinced that words bear truth, that narrative moves us toward goodness, and that memory, well preserved, carries beauty that motivates and inspires." --Vincent Lloyd, Commonweal "Eig has used his sharp journalistic eye to spin a powerful story of King and the movements in which he participated . [ King ] stirs a whirlwind of exhilarating feelings . Essential . A beautiful book that requires every reader to grapple with both the contradictions and the glory of one of our leading historical protagonists for peace, freedom, economic justice, and equality." --Michael K. Honey, Jacobin "Drawing on recently released FBI files, telephone recordings and interviews for this first full-scale biography in decades, Eig acknowledges King''s frailties and failures, as well as his radical critique of economic inequality and the war in Vietnam .
Eig enriches [the] familiar narrative of King''s activism with moving stories." --Glenn C. Altschuler, Minneapolis Star Tribune " King: A Life, is more than up to the challenge. It will take its place among the foremost of the many treatments of King . A moving, and in places beautiful, account of King''s life." --Richard Lischer, America "In this biography, his sixth book, Eig writes like an Olympic diver who jackknifes off the high board, slicing the water without a ripple. He performs with sheer artistry, like Picasso paints and Astaire dances." --Kitty Kelley, Washington Independent Review of Books "Definitive .
Monumental . An extraordinary achievement and an essential life of the iconic warrior for social justice." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "[A] sweeping biography. Eig gives a rousing recap of King''s triumphs as a civil rights leader . [A] complex, nuanced portrait . Eig''s evocative prose ably conveys his bravery, charisma, and spell-binding oratory . An enthralling reappraisal that confirms King''s relevance to today''s debates over racial justice." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "The most comprehensive MLK biography to date .
Eig refuses to ''defang'' King, instead pushing Americans to recognize the radical nature of his demands for justice and his resistance to not only racism but militarism and capitalism." -- Booklist (starred review) "Mining a trove of materials--many only recently available--augmented with voluminous archival work and hundreds of interviews for personal insights . [Eig] recovers the man, foibles and all, from the too often hollowed-out, sainted symbol that competing ideologies have sanitized for national observance . Engrossing . A must for readers interested in moving beyond cliched catchphrases to see a more complete and complex King." -- Library Journal (starred review) "Groundbreaking . King is such a nuanced, detailed biography, it''s like having Martin Luther King sitting in your living room." --Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times "Jonathan Eig''s book comes at a crucial time for our country.
With the gains we''ve made for civil rights and workers'' rights under constant threat, Eig reminds us that, in Dr. King''s own words, ''progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.''" --Sherrod Brown, United States senator from Ohio and author of Desk 88 "The first major biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in over a generation, King is a major achievement. With eloquence, compassion, and grace, Jonathan Eig offers a stirringly contemporary and complex portrait of a fully human--and humane--King, whose contradictions, frailties, and shortcomings worked in tandem with his brilliance, resilience, and genius to fundamentally transform American democracy and the world. King brilliantly recovers the defiantly courageous, radically democratic, and revolutionary anti-racist, anti-poverty, and anti-war activist who inspired as much hate and revulsion as he did love and compassion. A resounding triumph.
" --Peniel E. Joseph, professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Sword and the Shield "Greatness and opacity more often than not seem to go hand in hand: the most important among us seem out of reach, inscrutable, indifferent to our entreaties for human detail beyond the sensational or salacious. But here, Eig has pulled off a kind of miracle. Here is the King we know, think we know and ought to know. Here is the leader, the preacher, the orator, the husband, the father, the martyr, the human being--not with melodramatic halo in place, but in all his heroic, tragic Glory. Hallelujah!" --Ken Burns "Jonathan Eig''s book is the most comprehensive and original King biography to appear in over 35 years. Digitization and the web have made a slew of new documentary resources available, and Eig has mined them superbly. He is thus able to paint the first 25 years of King''s life more richly than ever before, and to offer fuller portraits of three of the most important people in King''s adult life: his wife Cor.