I don’t read a lot of biographies, but I found it hard to put this one down. The detailed portrait of Dr. King allows reader to go far beyond what the national holiday celebrates and the highlights elementary classrooms teach about the famed Civil Rights leader. It not only reveals a more complete picture of his values, beliefs, and political message, but it shows readers his humanity.

The book includes some commonly repeated quotes from a few of Dr. King’s speeches, adding greater context to his message. One chapter details how the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, tapped Dr. King’s phone before mailing him a recording of some of his conversations along with a letter hinting that the only way out for him was to take his own life.

It’s easy to imagine the moments of glory and the adrenaline rush that must have come from delivering powerful speeches to audiences hungry for his message. The book also shows what his life was like after he walked away from the podium. It reveals his fear as he was arrested and those marching with him faced armed government officials.

The adult version of this biography has already won awards and been hailed as an essential account of Dr. King’s life. I’m really excited that this young adult version makes this information more accessible to younger readers. This is well worth a read.

On the opposite of Karen Valby's book, I don't feel that this story needed to be told by someone who isn't Black. We all know Martin Luther King Jr and how influential he is. And to tell this story and how he was called the n word and not accurately portraying how that made him feel was weird. I also didn't feel comfortable knowing that this person who isn't Black was sitting there continuously typing out the n word. It's just something that I would rather stay with us.

Otherwise I thought it was ok. I didn't learn anything new about him from this although I wanted to. I also would have liked a bit more feeling when it was described how the world felt when he passed. My mom remembers shops and places shutting down at one point. I didn't get that feeling portrayed in this. Maybe it's different in the adult version, but this one just didn't do it for me.

This book was a well written and researched read about one of America’s most prominent civil rights leaders. I also learned about people like J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon B Johnson.
The book did use lowercase w when referencing whites and upper case B when referencing blacks. In my opinion, both should be uppercase or both should be lowercase like it has been in the past. To do one or the other uppercase seems politically correct and unnecessary.
I did learn some things about King’s character that were not honorable, which is to be expected. We are all sinful and King was a man just like everyone else. Yet he is an example of someone whom God used to do great things despite his faults.

Thank you to Net Galley for the opportunity to review this book before its publication date.

I’ve been wanting to read more about Dr. King, so I was really excited to get the opportunity to read an early copy of the YA edition of King: A Life. I’m impressed with how Eig was able to condense the much longer adult version without feeling like it was ‘dumbed down.’ This touches on many important milestones in Dr. King’s life. It’s easy to see the amount of research that went into this in order to portray Dr. King’s life as a whole. I learned so much about Dr. King and the civil rights movement while reading this that we were never taught in history classes. I also really appreciated the notes added at the end of the book that discuss the timeline of Dr. King’s life, questions for readers to think about after finishing, and the quote of a child asking if Dr. King had tattoos since it forces people to think of Dr. King as a person. I had both the ebook and audiobook for this, andI can’t recommend the audiobook enough. The narration by Dion Graham kept me fully invested and invoked so many emotions while reading that may not have hit as hard eyeball reading. This is such a compelling read that everyone should experience.

I have been interested in reading the author's 600+ page tome, ever since seeing it on Barack Obama's reading list. Thanks to NetGalley and McMillan's Children's Publishing Group, I have the opportunity to read the Young Adult Edition. YA non-fiction is my new go-to for understanding a topic in all of its complexity. The subject matter is not watered down, but it has been edited for brevity. At the end, the author summarizes a timeline, his purpose of writing about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and some common misconceptions about who he was as a human as well as a leader.

King: A Life gives such a multi-faceted view of Dr. King. The author introduces his childhood and college years, which are especially interesting for the fact that he dated a white woman briefly, and advanced in his studies, yet plagiarized some of his schoolwork. As we follow Dr. King's legacy, we see the turmoil both literally and figuratively. We see that he was not a saint or a superhero, but a real person who, though flawed, led a great movement.

I learned so much more about the civil rights movement and the events that surrounded it, as well as the geographical challenges of appealing to northern states who didn't actually hold the moral standard as history tries to portray. I grew up in St. Louis, and was appalled to learn that Brown vs. Board of education was not implemented for years afterward in Missouri. This book will hopefully invite readers to learn more about the civil rights movement and the laws that were changed because of Dr. King.

This book would be perfect for studying a more nuanced portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and I also recommend reading More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom by Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long. These should both be required reading in high school history classes.