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King is a thorough and detailed profile of Martin Luther King Jr. Jonathan Eig’s level of research is truly impressive and I learned a lot about MLK from this biography that I didn’t know before.

I listened to most of King on audio � Once again, Dion Graham did an excellent job, highlighting why he is one of my favorite narrators.

From the epilogue of King, Eig shares the following in closing and I’ve been thinking about this since I finished the book earlier this week. It’s especially worth thought and consideration today, a day dedicated to honoring MLK:

“Our simplified celebration of King comes at a cost. It saps the strength of his philosophical and intellectual contributions. It undercuts his power to inspire change. Even after Americans elected a Black man as president and after that president, Barack Obama, placed a bust of King in the Oval Office, the nation remains racked with racism, ethno-nationalism, cultural division, residential and educational segregation, economic inequality, violence, and a fading sense of hope that government, or anyone, will ever fix those problems.

Where do we go from here? In spite of the way America treated him, King still had faith when he asked that question. Today, his words might help us make our way through these troubled times, but only if we actually read them; only if we embrace the complicated King, the flawed King, the human King, the radical King; only if we see and hear him clearly again, as America saw and heard him once before.

“Our very survival," he wrote, "depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."