Book

King : a life

Summary: "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"--Dust jacket flap.

Record details

ISBN: 0374279292
ISBN: 9780374279295
Physical Description: x, 669 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm
print
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.
Copyright: ©2023

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 559-632) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Prologue -- (Part I) The Kings of Stockbridge -- Martin Luther -- Sweet Auburn -- "Black America still wears chains" -- The open curtain -- "A sense of responsibility" -- The seminarian -- "Madly, madly in love" -- The match -- The dynamic force -- Plagiarism and poetry -- Gideon's army -- "A precipitating factor" -- "My soul is free" -- "We ain't rabbit no more" -- A warning -- (Part II) Alabama's Moses -- "I'm glad you didn't sneeze" -- The pilgrimage -- Leaving Montgomery -- "Kennedy to the rescue!" -- The new Emancipation Proclamation -- Temptation and surveillance -- "The stuff is just in 'em" -- Birmingham jail -- (Part III): The dream, part one -- The dream, part two -- "The most dangerous negro" -- Man of the year -- A law observance problem -- The prize -- The director -- A new sense of "some-bodiness" -- Crowbar -- Selma -- "The true meaning of my work" -- "A shining moment" -- Burning -- Beware the day -- Chicago -- Black Power -- "I hope King gets it" -- "Not an easy time for me" -- A revolution of values -- Please come to Memphis -- Epilogue.