King
The Life of Martin Luther King
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Audible Standard 30-day free trial
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
King
Narrated by:
Dion Graham
Buy Now for £16.99
-
Narrated by:
-
Dion Graham
-
By:
-
Jonathan Eig
About this listen
*SELECTED AS ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2023*
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King 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 its 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.
Great story, Fantastic narration
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Highly recommended one of my favourite biographies I’ve read - on par with Haileys autobiography of Malcolm X and other towering books of that nature that try to examine the man more deeply, flaws and all
Superb narration and this was very impactful
Stunningly good - a celebration of the man and his ideas
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A story of a true king!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Details were incorporated into descriptions of the boycotts, sit ins, and marches, and made these sections more powerful.
There were jumps in the narrative I found hard to follow, particularly at the start of some chapters. The March on Detroit is introduced without clear explanation of how it came about. There’s no explanation that much of the speech MLK gave there would become the famous speech at the subsequent March on Washington, so when the Detroit speech was described I had to refer to the internet to clarify what was happening. I accept that perhaps most people know more about these events than I do and might not require the context.
From the March on Washington the book becomes much more engaging and feels like a coherent narrative idea is carrying it along, as MLK both civil rights and anti-war activist, attracting the ire of LBJ and J Edgar Hoover, and creating tension with partners in the civil rights movement.
This was a rewarding book and helped me more fully to understand why MLK is one of the most remarkable people in modern history. The book conveys his brilliance and bravery, But perhaps the author’s stated commitment to avoid hallowing MLK with a two dimensional hagiographic portrait is what renders the book a bit two dimensional. Perhaps avoiding hagiography is itself a kind of moralising. I would rather the author recounted the available facts in an engaging way.
On the reading/performance: When read in understated and straightforward style it was excellent. However, I do not like it when readers perform different voices for different speakers in a book, as in this case. The recurring impersonation of MLK when quoting him directly was distracting rather than enriching, and recordings of the speeches are available. Similarly distracting was the slight falsetto adopted for quoting Coretta Scott King and other women. I assume some producers prefer this performative approach but I can’t believe any listener finds it helpful.
Overall I recommend this book but that is partly because this is the only major bio of MLK on Audible. My sense is that at least in terms of style and narrative approach it is not definitive, and I will be reading David Garrow’s trilogy next (which regrettably is not on audible).
Good but perhaps not definitive
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.