Jonathan Eig – författare

I den här storslagna biografin skildrar Jonathan Eig medborgarrättsikonen Martin Luther King Jr. som en stor tänkare, en skicklig strateg och aktivist som ledde en av historiens största rörelser, och vars krav på etnisk och social rättvisa är lika aktuella idag som under hans livstid.

Författaren ger oss en inblick i en modig och ofta känslomässigt plågad persons liv. En pastor som brottades med egna svagheter och mörka tankar, en medborgare som jagades av sin regering och en man som var beredd att kämpa för rättvisan även om det visade sig bli en kamp på liv och död.

Med gedigen research har Jonathan Eig på ett lättillgängligt och levande sätt skrivit den första stora biografin på flera årtionden om Martin Luther King Jr., och den första med nyligen offentliggjorda FBI-handlingar. År 2024 tilldelades Eig Pulitzerpriset för King: Ett liv.

"... den mest kompletta och fullödiga biografi jag läst om medborgarrättsledaren / aktivisten Martin Luther King J:r ... King: Ett liv är en mycket välskriven, lättläst och komplett biografi." – Utdrag ur BTJ-häftet nr 18, 2025, Kent Lidman. Helhetsbetyg 5. (Briljant)

"Banbrytande ... King är en så nyanserad och ingående biografi att det är som om Martin Luther King sitter i ens eget vardagsrum." – Chicago Sun-Time

"King är lika fängslande som en spänningsroman ... Den i särklass bästa skildringen av Kings liv på mycket länge." – Washington Post

"Helt fantastisk ... King: Ett liv får läsaren att se King som något mer än en martyr, en ikon eller ett helgon – se honom för den han var, istället för den som folk trodde att han var eller ville att han skulle vara." – Boston Globe

"Ett sakligt och närgånget porträtt av Kings korta liv ..." – New Yorker

Hailed as “the most compelling account of [Martin Luther] King’s life in a generation” by the Washington Post, the Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller is now adapted for young adults in this new standard biography of the most famous civil rights activist in American History. Often regarded as more of a myth and legend than man, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was many things throughout his storied life: student, activist, preacher, dreamer, father, husband. From his Atlanta childhood centered in the historically Black neighborhood of Sweet Auburn to his precipitous rise as a civil rights leader on the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery, Dr. King would go on to become one of the most recognizable, influential, and controversial persons of the twentieth century.In this fast-paced and immersive adaptation of Jonathan Eig’s groundbreaking New York Times bestseller readers will meet a Dr. King like no other: a committed radical whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime, a minister wrestling with his human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government.The inspiring young adult edition of King: A Life highlights the author’s never-before-seen research—including recently declassified FBI documents—while reaffirming and recontextualizing the lasting effects and implications of MLK’s work for the present day. Adapted by National Book Award–nominated authors Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long, this biography for a new generation is a nuanced, unprecedented portrayal of a man who truly shook the world.Accolades and Praise for King: A Life: Pulitzer Prize WinnerA New York Times, Washington Post, and Indie BestsellerA National Book Award Nominee One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A “Best Book of the Year” from New York Times ● Washington Post ● TIME Magazine ● The New Yorker ● Publishers Weekly ● The Chicago Tribune ● Smithsonian Magazine ● Christian Science Monitor ● Air Mail“Supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable . . . Eig’s book is worthy of its subject.” —New York Times “No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig’s sweeping and majestic new King.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHYA finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award | Named one of the ten best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and TimeA New York Times bestseller and notable book of 2023 | One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2023One of The New Yorker’s essential reads of 2023 | A Christian Science Monitor best book of the year | One of Air Mail’s twelve best books of 2023A Washington Post and national indie bestseller | One of Publishers Weekly’s best nonfiction books of 2023 | One of Smithsonian magazine’s ten best books of 2023“Supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable . . . Eig’s book is worthy of its subject.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)“[King is] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . The most compelling account of King’s life in a generation.” —Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post“No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig’s sweeping and majestic new King . . . Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome.” —Will Bunch, The Philadelphia InquirerHailed by The New York Times as “the new definitive biography,” King mixes revelatory new research with accessible storytelling to offer an MLK for our times.Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs

A New York Times bestseller, the definitive biography of “The Greatest” heavyweight boxing champion and American icon.

Winner of the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing Winner of The Times Sports Biography of the Year

“As Muhammad Ali’s life was an epic of a life so Ali: A Life is an epic of a biography . . . for pages in succession its narrative reads like a novel—a suspenseful novel with a cast of vivid characters.” —Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay in racially segregated Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a sign painter and a housekeeper. He went on to become a heavyweight boxer with a dazzling mix of power and speed, a warrior for racial pride, a comedian, a preacher, a poet, a draft resister, an actor, and a lover. Millions hated him when he changed his religion, changed his name, and refused to fight in the Vietnam War. He fought his way back, winning hearts, but at great cost.

Jonathan Eig, hailed by Ken Burns as one of America’s master storytellers, sheds important new light on Ali’s politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition through unprecedented access to all the key people in Ali’s life, more than 500 interviews and thousands of pages of previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department files and audiotaped interviews from the 1960s. Ali: A Life is a story about America, about race, about a brutal sport, and about a courageous man who shook up the world.