King: A Life
by Jonathan Eig
688 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: May 2023
Jonathan Eig’s “King: A Life” was published early last year to nearly instant acclaim and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Biography earlier this year. Eig is a journalist and author previously best-known for his biographies “Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig” (2005) and “Ali: A Life” (2017).
Until now, David J. Garrow’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of MLK (published in 1986) was widely considered the standard review of King’s life. Eig’s biography, however, is the first book on MLK built upon a towering base of newly released documents including thousands of pages of White House and FBI transcripts, oral histories recorded by MLK’s father and wife and interviews with more than 200 members of King’s orbit and inner-circle.
Although Eig’s biography is substantial, with 557 pages of text, it could easily have been much longer. But while ideal biographies are generally a judicious balance of colorful, eloquent prose and incisive, penetrating history, Eig has largely eschewed the former in favor of a searing focus on the latter: on King’s persona, the daunting challenges of his time, and the resulting cause-and-effect.
In this respect, Eig exhibits the investigative and analytical tendencies of a journalist rather than the literary inclinations of a poet. But King’s life does not easily lend itself to quaint scene-setting or mesmerizing one-liners; significant stretches of his life prove heavy and dark rather than light and uplifting. Eig is adroit, however, at magnificently capturing King’s very best, and his most dramatic, moments.
No reader will soon forget Eig’s description of the eighteen-year-old’s entrancing cadence delivering his first sermon, the utterly enthralling chapter devoted to MLK’s 1963 “dream” speech or his subject’s struggle to balance opposition to the Vietnam War with his thirst for long-overdue civil rights.
Eig also manages to paint a nicely balanced, and incredibly human, portrait of King. MLK’s courage, eloquence and indomitable spirit are balanced against a curious tendency toward plagiarism and, more problematic, a resolute inability to remain faithful to his wife. Unfortunately, King’s innermost self seems largely inaccessible to external scrutiny, so readers are left with the sense that he is unlikely to ever be fully understood.
In Eig’s apparent quest for literary efficiency, he frequently misses the opportunity to more fully introduce important characters such as Andrew Young, Malcolm X and Thurgood Marshall – among others. And the book ends just five pages after King’s assassination, so regrettably missing is a serious appraisal of his impact on the nation or the arc of justice, an assessment of how his legacy has evolved, or any sense of curiosity for how King might view the current political and social climate.
Overall, however, Jonathan Eig’s “King: A Life” is a sober and reflective examination of a heroic but flawed civil rights figure. With new insights into FBI surveillance, Coretta Scott King’s thoughts and a nuanced look at MLK’s relationship with JFK and LBJ, there is much to be appreciated about this book. Barring a major revelation from the last round of FBI files slated for release in 2027, Eig’s book seems destined to be definitive biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the foreseeable future.
Overall rating: 4½ stars
nb: To fully appreciate the context and color embedded within Eig’s narrative – or to supplement his biography with others that will add important texture and dimension – readers should consider Beverly Gage’s fascinating “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century” (2022) and Robert Caro’s incredible multi-volume series on Lyndon B. Johnson (1982- ?)
