Martin Luther King Jr. is a widely revered figure in the United States, but his actual life and work has been obscured by decades of mythmaking and whitewashing. Eig’s book means to recover the genius and courage of King as well as his all-too-human limits, and the bitter controversy he stoked during his lifetime. Eig is able to draw on newly declassified FBI documents as well as a massive trove of materials from King and his close associates, including recordings of his wife, Coretta, and the records kept by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s official historian. Eig hopes that by portraying King in all his flaws, his example can be all the more inspiring, since he found courage despite facing tremendous obstacles and profound doubts.

In 1910, a young Black boy in Stockbridge, Georgia, named Michael King was delivering a bucket of milk to a neighbor when a group of white men demanded use of the bucket for themselves. When he refused, they beat him, prompting his mother to confront them. When a mob set upon the house later that night, his father, reasonably fearing the punishment for his wife’s actions, fled into the woods, and Michael’s family would never again find stability.