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Beyond the Dream: Rethinking MLK
Jonathan Eig
Author; Pulitzer Prize Winner

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.

Bio:
Jonathan Eig is the bestselling author of six books, four of them New York Times best sellers. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2024 for his most recent book, King: A Life, which was hailed by The New York Times as the "monumental” and “definitive" biography of Martin Luther King Jr.

Eig’s previous book, Ali: A Life, won a 2018 PEN America Literary Award. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages. He served as a producer on the PBS documentary Muhammad Ali, which was directed by Ken Burns.

The Birth of the Pill, Eig’s 2013 book, will be produced as a play next year by Chicago’s the TimeLine Theatre Company.

Eig began his writing career at age 16, working for his hometown newspaper, The Rockland County (N.Y.) Journal News and went on to work as a reporter for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, The Dallas Morning News, Chicago Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.

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