King: A Life

Written by:
Jonathan Eig
Narrated by:
Dion Graham

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
7
Narrator
3
Release Date
May 2023
Duration
20 hours 45 minutes
Summary
Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Best Nonfiction Narrator!

This program is narrated by Dion Graham, narrator of over 300 audiobooks and an AudioFile Golden Voice. Dion has won multiple Earphones and Audie Awards.

'Dion Graham superbly narrates this riveting audiobook, emulating the majestic cadence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, speeches. He captures the Civil Rights leader's deep, resonant tone; deliberate ministerial intonation; and, during offstage moments, his world-weariness... The result is a monumental biography performed exquisitely by a Golden Voice narrator.'- AudioFile Magazine (Earphones Award Winner)

'This gripping biography of a revolutionary leader flies by. Listeners interested in a new perspective of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life will be captivated.'—Library Journal

'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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Reviews
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Edward B.

a great book. gave a very humanized and un whyte washed veiw of him, his struggles, and hiw the FBIs campaign to destroy him. lots of conversation that were recorded and just recently released.

This is an excellent biography of Dr Martin Luther King, the first for some years. Narrator Dion Graham does a superb job of modulating his voice when King or other people are quoted, and does an especially good job with King's voice. The book itself is well written and covers most key events and people during the civil rights era, including Rev. Abernathy, Andrew Young, Malcolm X, Coretta Scott King, Stokely Carmichael, Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Kennedy, and many others. It is disturbing to learn how ugly, bigoted, cruel and hateful much of the US population was at the time, with details of numerous acts of murder and violence occurring frequently during the years King was active, including acts by elected officials and law enforcement. And it is illuminating to hear how the FBI and other high-ranking officials hounded King, often over his many extramarital infidelities. Despite his character flaws, King emerges as an eloquent and heroic figure, who foresaw for many years that he would be murdered, and yet persevered in his quest for better treatment of Black citizens.

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