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We need new studies on transcendent leaders so that we will never forget how their lives shaped history and how their legacies continue to impact our world with optimism for an improved tomorrow. Jonathan Eig’s unputdownable new biography of Martin Luther King Jr is the first full-length work to appear in decades about one of America’s most revered figures, and it is a commendable addition to the vast literature on MLK.

As I consumed Eig’s rapidly paced narrative, I appreciated how he avoided the easy temptation to glorify King as Christlike. Instead, he focuses on King’s lifelong commitment to the Christian ethics of love and compassion and of finding purpose and redemption through acts of undeserved suffering for the cause of helping others, which for King constituted the divine test for humans of fulfilling God’s expectations of us.

King’s mission to secure justice and equality for all Americans is inspiring, of course, but what can be disturbing is remembering how King’s efforts met perilous resistance from hatemakers, such as the Klan, but also from disgraceful elected officials at every level of government. Although he had a cooperative relationship with President Johnson that influenced the passage of both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, King’s enemies included governors, mayors, police chiefs, and members of Congress who wanted him gone.

When studying MLK’s life and work, trying to put in perspective the degree of cruelty and ruthlessness he faced can feel overwhelming and even numbing. I found it both shameful and sickening to recollect how segregationists were proud to defend themselves as justified in utilizing violence and murder without any fear of intervention from the law so that they could entrench racism and white supremacy in their states, counties, cities, and courts to perpetuate terror and oppression against Black people.

As King expanded his mission for attaining civil rights to include confronting the evils of poverty and war, he became more revolutionary in his final years with messaging that echoed Malcolm X who was assassinated three years before King suffered the same fate. In particular, King’s condemnation of the Vietnam War fractured his relationship with LBJ and drew the ire of close friends and, of course, from his sworn enemies. But what enrages me most is a reminder of how hatemakers had no inhibition about using violence against King even as he never wavered in discipline from nonviolent activism.

It is also troubling to learn from Eig’s research of newly available FBI reports how J. Edgar Hoover did everything in his power to coordinate schemes to ruin King. Hoover wanted to expose King’s extramarital affairs, and when those attempts didn’t gain traction, he spread falsehoods that branded King as a communist sympathizer intent on destroying American democracy.

I found myself at times in disbelief with contemplating how remarkable it was that King somehow survived for 13 years as leader of the Civil Rights Movement amid the relentless homicidal danger he faced on a daily basis. Every time he led an act of civil disobedience to confront the terror and injustice of racism and white supremacy, he encountered mobs of violent hatemakers wanting to harm him.

I felt a combination of admiration and sadness for King’s fearlessness and courage to face death threats and still continue to do what was right in exposing the evils of racism, poverty, and militarism. My sorrow had me fighting back tears as Eig documents King’s premonitions of how he knew he was going to die, and yet he remained steadfast to the cause of Christian love and nonviolence towards his enemies as the path to achieving a future humanity where everyone was judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

Throughout this engaging biography, my most lasting impression became Eig’s ability to compel me to reflect upon what has really changed since King’s sacrifices. Only defeatists would argue we’ve made no progress. However, the erosion of American conscience is frightening and alarming when we are forced to witness the resurgence of hate groups demanding their agenda be validated while lunatic politicians celebrate the passage of cruel, ruthless legislation that devastates peoples� lives, particularly people of color and anyone among the poverty-stricken who King gave his life fighting for.

No different than the maniacal segregationists in MLK’s era, those in recent years who have made the proliferation of hate fashionable declare grievance and victimhood for themselves when any effort is made to extend opportunity to others who are different, vulnerable, underprivileged, disadvantaged, or exploited. As King experienced during his life, I still see too much emboldened hatred and shameless misinformation from indecent and uncivil individuals raging against how improvement of America for everyone somehow makes the rich now poor, or how a better America for everyone somehow makes those with power and privilege less equal.

Eig’s biography captures both the joy and sorrow of what remembering King requires of us, and in his epilogue he leaves us to consider this challenge: “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.�

What might be most vital to take away from Eig’s new study of MLK’s life is the unsettling reminder that whenever we honor King’s achievements, we also must recognize the need to finish his unfinished work, which cost him his life. King was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, and Eig enables us to see that were King alive today he’d be on the front lines fighting to dismantle forces of hate, corruption, hypocrisy, misinformation, and injustice that are still turning us backwards, especially the rampant conniving of those in elected office doing everything in their power to undermine, reverse, and destroy MLK’s work.