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A Life
by Jonathan Eig
The first full biography in decades, King mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life 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.
What’s the best nonfiction book you read in 2025?
...vorites were: All The Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner Camera Girl by Carl Sferrazza Anthony The Jersey Brothers by Sally Mott Freeman King by Jonathan Eig (especially special since I attended an in-person interview with the author during our vacation in Florida last March)
-Diane_Jones
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (11/6/2025)
I finished "King: A Life" by Jonathan Eig tonight and loved it. It really does exactly what a biography should do. I started "Native Nations:A Millenium in North America" tonight and am cautiously optimistic.
-Anthony_Conty
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (10/30/2025)
I am reading "King: A Life" by Jonathan Eig, a vast book that is worth it! Last week's "Invisible Child" was one of the best literary experiences I have had it a while!
-Anthony_Conty
Pulitzer Prize, 2024
"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 clichéd catchphrases to see a more complete and complex King." ―Library Journal (starred review)
"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
"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
"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 Coretta and his closest male and female companions, Ralph Abernathy and Dorothy Cotton. The result is a great leap forward in our biographical understanding." ―David J. Garrow, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama
This information about King was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Steven E. Gross
Jonathan Eig is a former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal. He is the New York Times bestselling author of five books, including Ali: A Life, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season. Ken Burns calls him "a master storyteller," and Eig's books have been listed among the best of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Sports Illustrated, and Slate. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.
Name Pronunciation
Jonathan Eig: Pronounced like the word "eye" with hard "G" at the end.
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