King, A Life: A Conversation with Jonathan Eig

Black in Boston and Beyond

In this episode Hettie V. Williams is in discussion with Jonathan Eig about his bestselling book King, A Life recently published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux in 2023. Williams is the Director of the Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston and her research and teaching interests include African American intellectual history, Black women’s history, and race and ethnic studies. She is also the most recent president of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) from 2021 to 2023. Eig is a journalist, biographer, and bestselling author of six books including Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (2005), Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season (2007), and Ali: A Life (2017). His journalistic writings have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and the online edition of The New Yorker. Eig’s new biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. has now become the definitive work on King and in this episode, we discuss his comprehensive biography of a man he refers to as one of the nation’s “founding fathers.” This stirring account of King’s life presents a more humanistic and whole portrait of a man who struggled with depression, was relentlessly pursued by the FBI, and called this nation to conscience on the issue of racism. It is a must read.