Martin Luther King, Jr. Hardcover - 2002

by Marshall Frady

As a young journalist in the South in the 1960s, Marshall Frady walked the hot sidewalks, sat in crowded churches and courtrooms, and interviewed prominent civil rights leaders. Now the critically acclaimed biographer joins the bestselling Penguin Lives series to profile the man whose spiritual and political leadership has gained him an indelible place in twentieth-century history. In the masterly and riveting Martin Luther King, Jr., Frady draws on his twenty-five years of award-winning commentary on American race relations to give an inspiring portrait of this amazing leader and the turbulent era in which he lived.

Martin Luther King, Jr., deftly interweaves the history of the civil rights movement with King's rise to fame and influence and includes fascinating insight into factions within the movement itself. Frady explores the complexities of King's relationship with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, J. Edgar Hoover's relentless pursuit of King's demise, and King's own anticipation of his death. Above all, Frady's spellbinding voice brings to new life the ambitious, pious son of an Atlanta Baptist minister thrust onto a national platform of moral grandeur and shows, in vividly recalled scenes, recalling how both King and his country reacted to those cataclysmic years.