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King: A Life
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Best Nonfiction Narrator!
Plutarch Awards Nominee, 2024
Long-listed, Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, BookPage Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Washington Post Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Audible.com Best of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Library Journal Best Books of the Year, 2023
National Book Critics Circle Award—Nominee, 2023
Long-listed, CPL: Chicago Public Library Best of the Best, 2023
Long-listed, New Yorker Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Wall Street Journal Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Financial Times Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2023
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.
What the critics say
“Definitive . . . Monumental . . . An extraordinary achievement and an essential life of the iconic warrior for social justice.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] sweeping biography. Eig gives a rousing recap of King’s triumphs as a civil rights leader . . . [A] complex, nuanced portrait . . . Eig’s evocative prose ably conveys his bravery, charisma, and spell-binding oratory . . . An enthralling reappraisal that confirms King’s relevance to today’s debates over racial justice."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Eig’s monumental work, the first major biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades, challenges the image of him as a peaceful advocate of incremental change. There’s plenty of new detail, including from recently declassified F.B.I. files, allowing King to emerge as a complex, humane figure."—J. Howard Rosier, The New York Times
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What listeners say about King: A Life
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- RandomAccount007
- 2024-05-29
Incredible Work
I’ve never read a page turning biography like this. This is an amazing treatment of King’s life. We are made to understand him as a real man as opposed to a mythological saint.
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- CakeNerd
- 2023-08-31
Excellent
Comprehensive review of the life of a great and complicated man. Thorough examination of the man and the movement.
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