"A vivid portrait that deserves to be widely read . . . an incisive essay on [MLK's] significance today." —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Might Martin Luther King Jr.'s greatest accomplishments have been ahead of him? His murder in April 1968 did far more than cut tragically short the life of one of America's most remarkable civil rights leaders. 

In this concise biography, Harvard Sitkoff presents a stunningly relevant King. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, King's 1963 soul-stirring address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and the 1965 history-altering Selma march are all recounted. But these are not treated as predetermined high points in a life celebrated for its role in a civil rights struggle too many Americans have quickly relegated to the past. 

Presented alongside King's successes are his failures as an organizer in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida; as a leader of ever more strident activists; as a husband. Together, high and low points are interwoven to capture King's lifelong struggle.  By telling King's life as one on the verge of reaching its fulfillment, Sitkoff powerfully shows how King's activism was leading him to a direct confrontation with a president over an immoral war and with an America blind to its complicity in economic injustice.

"The best short biography we have of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr." —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Sitkoff argues that the more militant King is the more relevant King. And he's right." —The New York Observer

"Remarkable . . . concise and complex, judicious and deeply moving." —Kevin Boyle, author of the National Book Award–winning Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age