内容简介
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“King is a major achievement. With eloquence, compassion, and grace, Jonathan Eig offers a stirringly contemporary and complex portrAIt of a fully human―and humane―King . . . A resounding triumph.” ―Peniel E. Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield
“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
Named a most anticipated book of 2023 by The Washington Post, The Millions, and Literary Hub
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.
Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs
作者简介
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onathan Eig is the author of six books, including four New York Times best sellers. His most recent book is King: A Life, which the Times called a “the definitive biography” of Martin Luther King Jr. and a book “worthy of its subject.” Prior to that, Eig wrote “Ali: A Life,” which has been hailed as one of the best sports biographies of all time. Ali: A Life, won a 2018 PEN America Literary Award and was a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize. Eig served as a senior consulting producer for the PBS series Muhammad Ali. His first book, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, won the Casey Award. His books have been listed among the best of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.
目录
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Prologue 3
1 The Kings of Stockbridge 9
2 Martin Luther 17
3 Sweet Auburn 25
4 “Black America Still Wears Chains” 42
5 The Open Curtain 53
6 “A Sense of Responsibility” 65
7 The Seminarian 74
8 “Madly Madly in Love” 81
9 The Match 88
10 The Dynamic Force 101
11 Plagiarism and Poetry 107
12 Gideon’s Army 113
13 “A Precipitating Factor” 123
14 “My Soul Is Free” 139
15 “We Ain’t Rabbit No More” 148
16 A Warning 159
17 Alabama’s Moses 177
18 “I’m Glad You Didn’t Sneeze” 195
19 The Pilgrimage 208
20 Leaving Montgomery 217
21 “Kennedy to the Rescue!” 234
22 The New Emancipation Proclamation 252
23 Temptation and Surveillance 270
24 “The Stuff Is Just in ‘Em” 279
25 Birmingham Jail 293
26 The Dream, Part One 313
27 The Dream, Part Two 328
28 “The Most Dangerous Negro” 340
29 Man of the Year 351
30 A Law Observance Problem 366
31 The Prize 385
32 The Director 392
33 A New Sense of “Some-bodiness” 400
34 Crowbar 404
35 Selma 426
36 “The True Meaning of My Work” 439
37 “A Shining Moment” 447
38 Burning 458
39 Beware the Day 467
40 Chicago 475
41 Black Power 485
42 “I Hope King Gets It” 497
43 “Not an Easy Time for Me” 507
44 A Revolution of Values 522
45 Please Come to Memphis 531
Epilogue 553
Notes 559
Acknowledgments: Beloved Community 633
Index 643
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