A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick "Kennedy and King is an unqualified masterpiece of historical narrative . . . A landmark achievement." -- Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Rosa Parks Kennedy and King traces the emergence of two of the twentieth century's greatest leaders, their powerful impact on each other and on the shape of the civil rights battle between 1960 and 1963. These two men from starkly different worlds profoundly influenced each other's personal development. Kennedy's hesitation on civil rights spurred King to greater acts of courage, and King inspired Kennedy to finally make a moral commitment to equality. As America still grapples with the legacy of slavery and the persistence of discrimination, Kennedy and King is a vital, vivid contribution to the literature of the Civil Rights Movement.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *SELECTED AS ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2023* Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King 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 its 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.

More than two decades after his death, Martin Luther King, Jr. remains America’s preeminent symbol of the civil rights movement. In the early years of the movement King advocated a policy of nonviolent resistance to the racism ingrained in American society. In later years, however, King adopted a more militant stance toward racial and other forms of injustice. In this innovative book Richard Lentz considers King as a cultural symbol, from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956 to the Poor People’s Campaign, which King helped organize shortly before his assassination in 1968. In particular, Lentz examines the ways the three major news weeklies—Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report—presented King to their readers. It is primarily through media institutions that Americans shape and interpret their values. Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News—though representing different shadings of political ideology, ranging from left of center to conservative—were all aimed at the same audience, middle-class Americans. Therefore their influence on the nation’s values during a period of enormous social upheaval was significant. In the mid-1960s, when King shifted from reform to radicalism, the news magazines were thrust into what Lentz calls a “crisis of Symbols” because King no longer fit the symbolic mold the magazines had created for him. Lentz investigates how the magazines responded to this crisis, discussing the ways in which their analyses of King shifted over time and the means they employed to create a new symbolic image that made sense of King’s radicalization for readers. This is an important, perceptive study of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s career and an astute critical analysis of the reporting practices of the news media in the modern era.

The 1960s were a colorful, tumultuous age that transformed American society. Ever since the decade ended, Americans have debated the changes that it unleashed. While most liberals argue that the era’s eff ects were mainly positi ve and long overdue, conservati ves perceive the 1960s as a disastrous ti me that has left ruinous legacies for us. Stuck in the Sixti es analyzes conservati ves’ views about the 1960s era and its legacies by examining their discourse about such sixti es fi gures and movements as John F. Kennedy, Marti n Luther King, Jr., the civil-rights movement, the Warren Court, the Great Society, the Vietnam War, the anti war movement, the New Left , and the counterculture. The book reveals that, for a generati on, a focus on att acking and reversing the legacies of the 1960s has been essenti al to the conservati ve Republican agenda.

WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY A finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award | Named one of the ten best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Time A New York Times bestseller and notable book of 2023 | One of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2023 One of The New Yorker's essential reads of 2023 | A Christian Science Monitor best book of the year | One of Air Mail's twelve best books of 2023 A Washington Post and National Indie Bestseller | One of Publishers Weekly's best nonfiction books of 2023 | One of Smithsonian magazine's ten best books of 2023 “Supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable . . . Eig’s book is worthy of its subject.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) “[King is] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . The most compelling account of King’s life in a generation.” —Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post “No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig’s sweeping and majestic new King . . . Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome.” —Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer Hailed by The New York Times as “the new definitive biography,” King mixes revelatory new research with accessible storytelling to offer an MLK 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. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs

Martin Luther King (1929-1968) was the dominant force in the civil rights movement in the decade before his death. With his genius for rhetoric and his passionate advocacy of non-violent protest, King, like Gandhi, is a modern icon of the possibilities of political activism. He was at the centre of many of the key events in the struggle for equal rights for non-whites in America: he organised the boycott of the (segregated) buses of Montgomery, Alabama; was arrested for his role in mass protest in Birmingham; and was a keynote speaker, delivering his famous 'I have a dream' speech, at the historic March on Washington. He was Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1963 and a few months later became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. From the mid-1960s until his assassination in 1968, King widened his political concerns to protest against the Vietnam war and the evils of poverty. His birthday is now a national holiday in the United States.