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Martin
Luther King, Jr. by Marshall Frady Recommendation: ••• |
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Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Nutshell The Penguin Lives series has found a niche
in presenting biographies that are brief and well-written. A recent title in
this series, Martin
Luther King, Jr. by Marshall Frady, gives readers the story of Martin Luther
King in a nutshell. Unlike the 1500 pages from Taylor Branch’s two definitive
King biographical works (Parting
the Waters and Pillar of
Fire), readers may not understand context, nor enjoy the depth of stories
and events. But this new brief biography distills King’s life into critical
events, and lays open for readers’ reflection the fundamental conflict of
King’s life, what Frady calls “the transcendently spiritual and the
convulsing carnal.” Within two hundred pages, Frady guides readers through
the significant events that formed the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Here’s
an excerpt that presents a condensed version of the relationship between King
and the Kennedys just after the 1960 presidential election: “But the Kennedy
brothers themselves, despite their intervention to get him released from
Reidsville, were never really to comprehend, throughout most of their administration,
that full meaning of King. It became instead the immemorial conflict between
prophet and princes, a relationship for the most part of mutual estrangement.
The president and his brother were, to begin with, possessed of a relentless
caution of political calibration, particularly now given the electoral
tenuousness of their governing authority, and they were hardly unwitting that
King constituted the most sinister sort of hobgoblin to the standing
political estate in the South. Too, however wondrous his apostleship in the
Montgomery movement, King yet seemed too specialized and parochial a figure,
just a young Southern black preacher still tossing about for some sequel to
that sensation of four years ago, to carry any serious national political
heft. Accordingly, right after the election, King was invited neither for a
personal session with the incoming president, as were other, more regulation
black leaders like Roy Wilkins, not even finally to Kennedy’s inauguration
itself. Nor was he asked to the large convocation not long afterward of civil
rights eminences in the office of Attorney General Robert Kennedy.” If you’re looking for a brief overview of
the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., with some key insights, you’re likely to
enjoy reading Marshall Frady’s new biography, Martin
Luther King, Jr. Steve Hopkins, May 8, 2002 |
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ã 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the June 2002
issue of Executive
Times Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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