King - A Life by Jonathan Eig
$17.50
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Web ID: 164909306 months ago
from Georgia
Fantastic
Possibly the best biography I’ve ever read. Well researched, well written, and just straight up a fantastic book.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
1 year ago
from Michigan
Amazing, excellent biography of ML King
This new biography of Martin Luther King Jr blew me away. Very readable, even though it appears to be a doorstop of a book. Easy to read, very thoughtful and very informative. A great suggestion for anyone.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
2 years ago
from Pennsylvania
Thoroughly researched, page-turning biography
This is a well written, thoroughly researched, page-turning biography of one of the most significant leaders of the 20th century. I learned so much that I didn't know, was totally absorbed by the dramatic prose, and enthralled by the fast pace of the narrative, This is the MLK story that needed to be told. Using newly discovered personal letters, FBI transcripts and personal interviews, this is. a look at MLK with his strengths and flaws laid out for the reader. Highly recommended Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced reader copy.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
2 years ago
from Duluth, Minnesota
A massively researched biography of Dr. King
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968; Ph.D. in theology, Boston University, 1955) is the subject of the American Jewish journalist Jonathan Eig’s massively researched and admirably lucid new 680-page 2023 book King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Because Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, he was a martyr for black civil rights – and for non-violent protest. No doubt the Jim Crow practices in the South that inspired his activism are mostly historical memories today – perhaps in part thanks to Dr. King’s non-violent protests. But slavery has been described as America’s original sin, and the scars of slavery and racial inequality are still with us today. Consequently, I believe that the agape love that Dr. King advocated for non-violent protest (pp. 84, 202, and 287) can still be advocated today for those who want to fight racial inequality in American society today. Eig’s book contains a “Prologue” (pp. 3-6), 45 crisply written chapters (pp. 9-552), and an “Epilogue” (pp. 553-557). His book contains “Notes” keyed to page numbers (pp. 559-632) and an “Index” (pp. 643-669). Eig “interviewed more than two hundred people” for this book (p. 634; he lists their names on pp. 639-642 in his aptly titled “Acknowledgments: Beloved Community” [pp. 633-642]). Now, in Eig’s Chapter 7: “The Seminarian” (pp. 74-80), he says, “King’s genius in later years would be his ability to deliver messages that inspired Black and white listeners alike, messages that made racial justice sound like an imperative for all, messages that crossed lines of theology and geography, that suggested both sides needed to act if the racial divide were ever to be erased without violence. . . . Crozer [Theological Seminary] helped him find the right words and the right tone so that he could one day explain his diagnosis clearly and passionately to audiences of every race” (p. 78). In addition, Eig says that at Crozer Theological Seminary, King wrote “‘as a Christian I believe that there is a creative personal power in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality – a power that can not be explained in materialistic terms.’ History, he concluded, was guided by the spirit, not by matter” (pp. 78-79). In addition, Eig says, “He [King] continued to show particular interest in the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch, who argued that the ‘Kingdom of God’ required not only personal salvation but social justice, too. King admired Rauschenbusch’s call to action and related to his sense of optimism. It is ‘quite easy,’ he wrote, ‘for me to think of the universe as basically friendly. King believed that human personality reflected the spirit of God. But the negative corollary to that belief meant that racism, which degraded personality and denigrated human life, had to be evil. Even in the North, he experienced that evil” (p. 79). Now, in Eig’s Chapter 9: “The Match” (pp. 88-100), he says, “King chose [Boston University], in large part, for the chance to study with Edgar S. Brightman, known for his philosophical understanding of the idea of a personal God, not an impersonal deity lacking human characteristics. ‘In the broadest sense,’ Brightman wrote, personalism is the belief that conscious personality is both the supreme value and the supreme reality in the universe.’ To personalists, God is seen as a loving parent, God’s children as subjects of compassion. The universe is made up of persons, and all personalities are made in the image of God. The influence of personalism would support King’s future indictment of segregation and discrimination, ‘because personhood,’ wrote the scholars Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp, Jr., ‘implies freedom and responsibility’” (p. 89). Now, in Eig’s Chapter 11: “Plagiarism and Poetry” (pp. 107-112), he says, “For his doctoral dissertation, King compared conceptions of God presented by two theologians Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman. King criticized both Tillich and Wieman for their distance from personalism. Tillich ascribed personality only to beings, not to God, while Wieman described God in relatively depersonalized terms, as an ‘integrating process.’ King rejected both ideas, saying human fellowship with God could only occur when both parties to the relationship possessed understanding and respect. Ascribing a human personality to God, King argued, in no way implied a limitation of God’s power” (p. 110). Eig also says, “Personalism stresses that every human being shares the image of God. In the view of King and other personalists, every act of injustice toward a person is thus an insult to God. Unlike more abstract theologies, personalism connected to people’s everyday lives and, to King, felt consonant with the action-based preaching of his father and grandfather” (p. 110). In addition, Eig says, “King’s dissertation attracted little attention until 1990, when scholars at Stanford University announced that substantial parts had been plagiarized. . . . Despite his plagiarism, and despite his fundamental disagreements with them, King learned lasting theological lessons from Tillich and Wieman. In his seminal work, The Courage to Be, Tillich wrote that courage to be requires acceptance of anxiety – the anxiety that comes with guilt, condemnation, and death. That courage means staying connected to God when one loses faith. ‘But doubt is not the opposite of faith,’ Tillich wrote, ‘it is one element of faith.’ That philosophy would help King find strength in the face of fear, in moments of exhaustion, and perhaps most poignantly, as he became consumed with the certainty of his own premature death. . . . King, in other words, took enough from Tillich to adapt the theologian’s work to his own purpose and own audiences. In a 1967 sermon, King said people did not need complicated philosophy or theology. He compared Tillich’s notion of God as ‘Being-Itself’ to the way that ordinary people had always worshipped, thinking of God as a ‘lily of the valley . . . a bright and morning star.’ That kind of belief, King said, leads to the simplest conclusion of all, when a man or woman says of God: ‘He is my everything’” (pp. 111-112; only the last ellipsis here is in Eig’s text; but the earlier ones are mine). Now, in Eig’s Chapter 20: “Leaving Montgomery” (pp. 217-233), he says, “In recent months, King wrote, he had become more convinced than ever in the reality of a personal God. ‘Perhaps the suffering, frustration, and agonizing moments which I have had to undergo occasionally as a result of my involvement in a difficult struggle have drawn me closer to God,’ he wrote. ‘Whatever the cause, God has been profoundly real to me in recent months. . . . Therefore I am not yet discouraged about the future. . . . In a dark, confused world, the spirit of God may yet reign supreme’” (pp. 223-224; Eig’s ellipses). Now, like the first Catholic president of the United States, John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), the black Baptist minister and civil rights activist was an extraordinary womanizer (the “Index” contains a sub-entry on MLK’s “extramarital affairs” [p. 656]). In Eig’s Chapter 23: “Temptation and Surveillance” (pp. 270-278), he says, “[Stanley] Levison points out that King and John F. Kennedy had something in common in this regard. ‘Both had powerful fathers who were men of notorious sexual prowess, Levison told historian Arthur M. Schlesigner, Jr. ‘Perhaps both were unconsciously driven to prove they were as much men as their fathers’” (p. 272). In Eig’s Chapter 44: “A Revolution of Values” (pp. 522-530), he says, “Almost overnight, King became the nation’s most famous opponent of a war [in Vietnam] that had the approval of an overwhelming majority of Americans. Newspaper editorials questioned not only his patriotism but even his commitment to civil rights” (p. 522). “King also said his view of white Americans had changed. After his experience in Chicago, after seeing how white people in the North resisted appeals to integrate their schools and neighborhoods, he had concluded that only a small part of white America supported racial justice. ‘Most Americans,’ he said, ‘are unconscious racists’” (p. 525). “A congressional investigation reported that there had been seventy-six riots in the first nine months of the year. Between 1965 and 1967, the report said, 118 civilians and 12 law enforcement officers had been killed in the unrest, while almost 29,000 people, the vast majority of them Black men, had been arrested” (p. 526). “King’s new book bore the perfect title for these days of rage: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” (p. 527). In Eig’s “Epilogue” (pp. 553-557), he says, “Where do we go from here? In spite of the way America treated him, King still had faith when he asked that question [in his 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?]. Today, his words might help us make our way through these troubled times, but only if we actually read them; only if we embrace the complicated King, the flawed King [e.g., the womanizer and plagiarist], the human King [who suffered bouts of exhaustion and depression], the radical King; only if we see and hear him clearly again, as America saw and heard him once before. “‘Our very survival,’ he wrote, depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant, and to face the challenge of change’ [Eig is here quoting from p. 181 of King’s 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?]. Amen” (p. 557).
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
2 years ago
from Tennessee, Tn.
ADream
Martin Luther King is a very special man. This is what makes him still memorable today. He is an inspiration. It is as though God is holding his hand tightly every time he makes a decision. He seems not to fear or have any anxious thoughts when he does need to take the next step in his life. It is astonishing to recall how much he believed in and thought of Gandhi's ideas. He took his life goals seriously. Jonathan Eig's book is one that leaves us knowledgeable of the fact that he was a "real" man. He had flaws.He did like women. At one time, he dated a white lady. People who did not want races to mix judged the couple harshly. It is impossible not to bring up the word racism when talking, reading or thinking about him. During that time people believed deeply in the tenets of Jim Crow. More than once he was accused of plagiarism. He must have felt shame and anger. King by Jonathan Eig is easy to read. I did get confused reading so many abbreviations of the King name.The man was too big to ever think that his words will die away. His words are all about a better America, a more accepting America and an America where there is truly Democracy.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com