Chet's Reviews > King: A Life

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.