King

'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 ... [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' * The New York Times * 'A sober and intimate portrait of King’s short life, and one that can’t help but be admiring, given how much King accomplished, and how quickly he did so ... Eig captures the ferocity of the forces that opposed King' * The New Yorker * 'Jonathan Eig’s magnificent new biography is an overdue attempt to grapple with King in all his complexity ... Eig makes [King's] courage and moral vision seem all the more exceptional for having come from a man with ordinary flaws' * The Economist * '[A] landmark work of scholarship ... It’s the fullness of this portrait, rich in contradictions, that makes King: A Life the definitive biography of a legendary leader'  * Esquire * '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'  * The Washington Post * 'Definitive ... Monumental ... An extraordinary achievement and an essential life of the iconic warrior for social justice'  * Kirkus Reviews * '[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 * '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 *