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I’ve fallen too far behind in my write-ups so it’s time for an abridged review.

A remarkable, illuminating (on several levels), eminently readable examination of Martin Luther King's life and times.

Author Jonathan Eig (author of the highly regarded book "Ali") makes his purpose clear from the start. His book, he says, seeks to recover the real man from the gray mist of hagiography. In the process of canonizing King, we’ve defanged him, replacing his complicated politics and philosophy with catchphrases that suit one ideology or another. We’ve heard the recording of his “I Have a Dream�� speech so many times we don’t really hear it anymore.

He succeeds brilliantly in this. The Martin Luther King, Jr, shown here is not a saint but a deeply flawed and conflicted man. The book moves briskly through the stages of his life, from his education and early experiences (including, remarkably, this: "ten-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. dressed in slave rags and sung with his church choir at the premier of the film Gone with the Wind) the factors that shaped his formative years to his entry into the ministry, his close brush with death when he was stabbed, his exhausting efforts to secure civil rights, and the work he began to address poverty in the United States. Throughout the book we see the many demons King wrestled with, the profound self-doubt, fear, exhaustion, frustration, uncertainty about what to do (Bayard Rustin said King’s biggest “ironic�� flaw as a protest leader was that he hated conflict), anger, and even a growing sense that he would be killed as JFK had been (”When he learned Kennedy was dead, King sat in silence for a long time. ‘This is what is going to happen to me also, he finally said.�� Reading this, I was reminded of the dark presentiments Lincoln had before he was killed.) We also see how extraordinary he was, how broad his vision and deep his determination.

I’m not going too rehash what others have written about “King.�� It was universally and deservedly regarded as one of the best books of the year. Instead, I’ll quickly note what struck me as I read �� the things I knew and forgot, vaguely remembered, remembered wrong, or didn’t know at all. I won’t differentiate one from another here.

Predictably, given what most people now know of King’s life, much of the book has to do with Dr. King’s relationship to women: his mother, girlfriends, wife, and colleagues. Dr. King loved his wife dearly but he had many, many affairs, some of them lasting for years. It wasn’t much of a secret to those around him: His colleagues certainly knew, and the journalists of the time protected King’s privacy out of what Eig calls “standards of fairness and decency, at a time when even mild swear words never appeared in print or on the air.��

Then there was J. Edgar Hoover who became utterly obsessed with Dr. King. The extent of his animus is startling. King was followed, photographed, his phone lines tapped and recorded. Hoover regularly saw that the sordid details were leaked to the press, sometimes in the form of tape recordings that were edited to make the tapes as salacious as possible. To his deep frustration, the press didn’t bite. It was a very different world then -- in many ways.

The book covers the difficult dynamics between various parties in the civil rights movement: NAACP, SCLC, Malcolm X, etc. It was all surprisingly personal. At each step there was tension. Was King the right person for the job? (He certainly wasn't at all sure himself.) Should he focus his energy solely on the South or should he also become active in the North? By expanding his speeches to problems of poverty in America was he diluting the racial nature of the movement? Was his speaking out so forcibly against the Vietnam War alienating allies and important politicians (LBJ among them) and making the struggle harder?

Some lines from the book suggest what was going on in these arenas:

This, from Eig’s description of Dr. King addressing Congress: �� ‘Rarely, in any time, does an issue lay bare the heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or security, but rather to the values and the purposes and meaning of our beloved Nation.�� The audience of legislators applauded. He paused and delivered each of his next four words deliberately: ‘And �� we �� shall �� overcome!�� Members of the audience jumped to their feet, applauding.�� Utterly unimaginable today.

“Rank and file Negro sentiment is against Martin,�� [Bayard] Rustin said, “because they are saying, ‘China is not our problem. We ain’t got no freedom here. What the fuck is wrong with King. “While our Black brothers are ` in Vietnam, we’re getting gassed for trying to vote in Canton, Mississippi.��

“The same liberals who helped fight Jim Crow in the South declined to address issues of job discrimination, housing segregation, and police assaults on Black communities in the North�� because so many Americans thought it did not need to change…�� Shocked by the level of racial violence in Illinois, King said, “I think the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate.��

The book powerfully reminds (and I’m convinced we do need to be reminded) us of how terrible the Jim Crow South was. Eig reports on numerous shootings, bombings, and beatings. One horrifying example among many: A Black female student at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee was abducted and raped. Four young white men admitted to the crime. Yet only when students at the Black university announced a campaign of “passive resistance,�� including a boycott of classes and mass prayer meetings, were charges filed in the case.��

“King also said his view of white Americans had changed. After his experience in Chicago, after seeing how white people in the North resisted appeals to integrate their schools and neighborhoods, he had concluded that only a small part of white America supported racial justice. ‘Most Americans,�� he said, ‘are unconscious racists.�� ��

And finally, this: �� 'Toward the end of that afternoon,�� [King] said, ‘I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare.�� ��

Eig's book is a powerful corrective to the impulse White America in particular has long had to view Martin Luther King, Jr., as a saint. As he succinctly puts it elsewhere in the book, "In hallowing King we have hollowed him." For me, by portraying King with all his flaws, gifts, mistakes, and accomplishments, Eig does more than simply set the record straight. By sanctifying King we unconsciously tell ourselves that most of the work has been done, that he did most of what he set out to do even though his life was tragically cut short. King's life, fully viewed, shouldn't be understood as the end point of America's journey to racial and economic justice but a foundation on which to build.