King: A Life
Jonathan Eig spent years with fresh FBI files, newly opened archives, and audio recordings to write the first comprehensive life of Martin Luther King Jr. in a generation. The King who emerges is fuller and more human than the marble figure of national holidays: a young preacher wrestling with doubt, a strategist under constant government surveillance, and an exhausted leader pushed toward radical economic ideas late in his life. Eig restores the tension and risk King lived with every day.
What you might want to know about King: A Life
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The first major biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades draws on newly released documents and recordings to show the man behind the monument.
Jonathan Eig drew on recently declassified FBI documents, new interviews, and audio recordings that were not available to earlier biographers, making it the first major King biography in decades.
King: A Life was written by Jonathan Eig, published in 2023 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
King: A Life is 669 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, King: A Life takes most readers 10 to 14 hours to finish.
King: A Life is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.