Product Description
Memoirs of an American missionary in Assam, India. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

John W Brown
This book is exactly what it says it is; no more and no less. What else could one ask -- a nude centerfold of Mary Magdalene? Nah! Let's give it a five!! ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

Product Description

Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, this is the most comprehensive book ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on more than seven hundred interviews with all of King's surviving associates, as well as with those who opposed him, and enhanced by the author's access to King's personal papers and tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents, this is a towering portrait of a man's metamorphosis into a legend.

Customer Reviews (14)

One of the best books of the civil rights movement and Dr King
It is one of the most comprhensive books I have read.It read likes a novel.Hard to put down.

The Complete Story
This book is the most comprehensive, articulate book I have ever found about Martin Luther King, Jr., the SCLC, and the Civil Rights Movement. Garrow does an incredible job being extremely detailed. Every meeting, every conversation, every thought during these troubled times is addressed in this book. This book covers the joys, trials, triumphs, and tragedies of the civil rights movement throughout the years.

I was in awe of how much I didn't know about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his incredible journey from pastor's boy to the most inspirational leader of the 20th century.

I loved this book; 4 1/2 stars
There are so many positive things to say about this comprehensive book on Dr. King and the civil rights movement. Garrow's research and story-telling are both outstanding, leading to a book that I couldn't put down and one that provided me with so much information.

One reason I love the book is that I would neither call it an overly sympathetic nor critical portrayal of King. Garrow simply presents the facts in an easily understandable fashion, allowing the reader to make his/her own conclusions. Positive and negative aspects of King's personal life and movement leadership are pointed out; it's up to us to determine his legacy. And in my mind, his legacy is as strong as ever. King sacrificed himself to the cause, and not only in his premature death, but also in living a modest life with virtually no relaxation or leisure. And what he endured at the hands of the FBI just broke my heart.

I was also impressed with the way King and the other movement leaders were humanized. Garrow didn't only list the facts about their achievements and tactical errors, but he also provided great insight into the lives of these men and women.

Here are my two gripes that, in my mind, keep the book just a hair shy of 5 stars. One, I would have liked to have learned more about King the husband and father. I know he wasn't home much, but there was very little information about the type of father he was. And two, the book ends so abruptly. How did Coretta receive and react to the news? How did America react? What was the story behind the assassination? What was his funeral like? How did the movement proceed in the immediate aftermath of his murder? These were things I wanted to learn about.

Despite that, I am so thrilled that I chose to read this book, and I would recommend it to anyone.

A life to ponder
Certainly it was the definitive biography; although there was something troubling about his use of illegally gathered materials that the FBIcollected to damn Martin, the picture painted is a real picture of a real life.Certainly Martin was always an inspiration to me, and I felt that I knew him better as a man after this biography, more so than after earlier ones.

My one major criticism is that Garrow uses a possibly mythical "night in the kitchen" as the spiritual turning point for Martin--I think it more likely that if any night mattered it was that in a jail, perhaps Selma.(Though I don't accept the idea that he chickened out for the Selma-Montgomery march--he had no reason to expect the brutal response that occurred.)Because a night in jail can really make you think about what your values are, whether it is worth suffering for truth, and whether others really WANT the truth.One of the things I think I learned from Martin is that people may not be ready for the truth now, but it is only a matter of time.

I also learned something that seems obvious, but wasn't to many of us.It is one thing to violate an unjust law publicly--and let other people see you unjustly punished.It is another to violate an unjust law privately, for even if you are in the right, when you are punished, this injustice is unlikely to draw the outrage of the citizenry, and you find yourself alone.

Of course, at the time that Martin and the SCLC were active, the courts were basically on our side--the side of the little guy.Now, as far as I can see, the law really only exists to protect large companies.Why, if Martin were to do this now, he'd be sued out of existence for "defaming" and "slandering" the good name of the great state of Alabama!If he couldn't "prove" that America really had given his people a blank check...why then, HE'D be in the wrong.And if he really let the law proceed in its own way, he'd have spent a lot more than one or two nights in jail, I can tell you that!

And from Garrow's book, I believe he still would have done it.He wasn't the initiator, but when fate knocked on his door, he opened it up and invited fate in.And that should be an inspiration to us all. [9]

Riveting It's Not
You must have to really work to turn a life so packed full of meaning and world-changing events into a snoozer of a book. I have no idea how "Bearing the Cross" received a Pulitzer Prize -- certainly not on the basis of its prose. While the author undoubtedly did an enormous amount of research, the book reads like a high school history essay; i.e. a monotonously linear string of events -- "Then King did this; then he did that; then they had an SCLC meeting; blah, blah, blah...". The book virtually no character development; in fact everyone but King are merely names on a page. It took a herculean effort to slog through the 600+ pages, but perhaps the book wasn't meant to be read straight through. Maybe this is one of those research tomes meant for reference by historians -- check out the ample index for the names, places and events you're interested in at the moment and read only snippets at a sitting.

Despite being far too long, the book has a couple major oversights. First, there are no photographs whatsoever -- for someone as widely seen on TV and newspapers as King, couldn't they have sprung for a few pages showing historical events? Second, the book abruptly ends with the assassination -- when King dies so does the book -- nothing on the national reaction to his death, nothing on Ray or the motivation for/theories around the killing.

In sum, great research, poor writing. Perhaps Taylor Branch can edit his multi-volume set into a readable single-volume account. Until then, look elsewhere for a good King biography.

... Read more