King: The Life of Martin Luther King – Eig Jonathan (2023)

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King is the first major biography in decades of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. This revealing portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world offers an intimate view of a courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. Eig sheds new light on the origins of the King family and on Martin Luther King Jr.'s complex relationships with his wife, father and fellow activists. The book portrays a minister wrestling with human frailty 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. Following King from the classroom to the pulpit and on to the streets of Birmingham, Selma and Memphis, Eig dramatically recreates the journey of a man who transformed American race relations and became its only modern-day founding father, as well as the nation's most mourned martyr. This landmark biography presents an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, brilliant strategist and committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as during his lifetime. The contents are in English.