Marshall Frady (1940–2004)

Like that of most famous men, Martin Luther King Jr.'s life is one largely remembered as a series of events: the Montgomery bus boycott, the Birmingham marches, his "I Have a Dream" speech, his march in Selma, and his assassination in Memphis. While this list includes its most triumphal moments, it does little to cover the full range of his activities or the private life he lived. This is what Marshall Frady provides in this brief book. In a little more than 200 pages, he conveys the span of show more King's tragically short life, from his Atlanta boyhood through his early ministry to the activism that made him famous and helped to transform the nation. Though the familiar highlights are there, he adds to the reader's understanding elements that King's achievements have overshadowed, such as his failed campaign in the Georgia town of Albany, or the brutal resistance his efforts faced in St. Augustine, Florida. Their inclusion certainly qualifies the scope of what Kind accomplished, but it also helps readers to better understand the size of the challenge King and other protestors faced in challenging Jim Crow segregation.

Frady adds little that is new to the story of King's life, yet his analysis is informed by his personal experiences covering King as a young reporter in the 1960s. His account of the St. Augustine protests is a particular highlight of his book for that reason, as he recounts the events he covered there with his firsthand observations of the events he chronicles. These he uses to inform his portrait of a fatalistic, sometimes depressed figure, one who felt fully the burden of expectations and embarked upon his many campaigns with the expectation that he would die as a result. That loss stalks its pages may reflect an excessive degree of hindsight on Frady's part, but it helps to underscore the risks King took throughout his life and the loss we all suffered with his assassination barely a dozen years after he first emerged as a leader of the civil rights movement. For anyone seeking an accessible introduction to that life and an overview of what he achieved in it, Frady's book is a good place to start. show less

One of the best biographies of MLK that I have ever read. Doesn't whitewash his plagarism (doctoral dissertation and otherwise) or his personal foibles ("Fucking is a form of anxiety reduction..."), yet it is also not a screed against him. An excellent primer to the civil rights era.

I cannot believe Penguin published such a poorly written book. Worst book I have read in many years. The author goes out of his way to flaunt his extensive vocabulary (or more likely, that he owns a thesaurus). More importantly, he gives a pass to King's numerous extra-marital affairs and to the plagiarism of his doctoral dissertation. King is a complex and important figure. A good biography helps the reader to deal with the good and the bad -- not to overstate the good and downplay the bad. show more I chose this book only because I assumed that Penguin would publish a strong biography of King. I will be more selective in the future. show less

This an excellent book giving you a short overview of the life of Martin Luther King, without having to read the likes Taylor Branch's America in the King Years and Parting the Waters, Stephen Oates Let the Trumpet Sound and David Garrow's Bearing the Cross.

This an excellent book giving you a short overview of the life of Martin Luther King, without having to read the likes Taylor Branch's America in the King Years and Parting the Waters, Stephen Oates Let the Trumpet Sound and David show more Garrow's Bearing the Cross.

It covers the major events in King's life without glossing over his womanizing and plagiarizing on his masters and doctorate.

My major problem is this dude likes to use big words. I do not who he was talking to and the big vocabulary is a real distraction looking up words and find out Frady could have used a commonly known word to effect. show less