King: The Life of Martin Luther King by Jonathan Eig review – a story that speaks to our times | Biography books
Who was the Rev Martin Luther King Jr? In America, the civil rights activist and Baptist minister is now embraced across the political spectrum even as the teaching of the history of discrimination and segregation that shaped him is being actively suppressed in many parts of the country. Beyond the US, he is widely celebrated in nations confronting difficult questions about their own racial pasts.At the time of his assassination in 1968, however, most Americans had a negative view of him, and the National Security Agency…