A review by vegetakira1234
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

Wrapping up all of MLK's actions and thoughts into one book is difficult, but Jonathan Eig does his best to do just that. From starting with the life if his parents and grandparents to how he was raised, I was able to get a better sense of the values that would eventually shape his later views in life. Specifically his focuses on living the life of a Christian as the Bible teaches, rather than cherry picking passages that he liked, such as asking for no retribution on the woman who stabbed him, on the man who assaulted him, or on any of the countless cops that beat him and many others in the various protests and marches. Seeing how his views and stubbornness also were shaped by the shifting landscape of the Civil Rights movement, such as after his more popular successes into how he "tarnished" his influence in the North by doubling and tripling down on his views on the Vietnam War. He was truly in it, thanks to the support from Coretta and Abernathy and many others, to help the black people of the U.S. be seen as people and treated equally by white people across the country. The apathy shown to him by the Northern whites when he was asking them to see how their racist actions and policies were just as harmful as Jim Crow sheds some extra light on this period of time not always taught in K-12. More people need to understand the difficulties that the various leaders of the movements, as fractured as it sometimes was, had to go through and that there was more to the Movement and Martin Luthor King, Jr. than "I Have a Dream."