biography

Review: Dancing in My Dreams

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Cover image of "Dancing in my Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner

Dancing in My Dreams (Library of Religious Biography), Ralph H. Craig, III. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802878632), 2023.

Summary: A biography of the life of Tina Turner, centering on how her embrace of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism was transformative in the fulfillment of her dreams, including that of becoming a religious teacher.

If you remember Tina Turner, most likely your memory of her was in performance, singing “Proud Mary” or “What’s Love Got to Do With It”, often beginning low and slow and climaxing in a frenzy of dancing by her and her backup singers as she belted out powerful vocals–a revival service at a rock concert.

Maybe that should have cued me to powerful spiritual roots in her life. Even so, there was much new for me in this spiritual biography of Turner’s life. What should have been evident, knowing the stories of other, was her Black church experience, beginning at the Woodlawn Baptist Church in rural Nutbush, Tennessee, and later Pentecostal Church of God in Christ churches in Nashville. Growing up as Anna Mae Bullock, she was the child of a strict religious mother and absentee father who died young, She also lived part of the time with an aunt Zelma and her uncle Richard, who she eventually would live with after her mother left, moving to St. Louis where she encountered the clubs, sang for Ike Turner, eventually becoming part of his act, becoming “Tina” and marrying her.

On one hand, Ike Turner turned Tina into the professional who could walk into a studio and lay down a vocal track in one take. But it came at the tremendous cost of physical abuse, making her life a study of partner abuse and the psychological fear and dependency that kept her from leaving for many years, even as Ike further descended into drug addiction.

What distinguishes this book is Ralph Craig’s account of the turning point in her life, resulting from a number of spiritual practices including consulting with readers, astrology, and most significantly, Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism. Through Wayne and Ana Maria Shorter and their friend Valerie Bishop, she was introduced to the chanting associated with this Japanese form of Buddhism and the peace and focus she gained from this practice and their support helped her leave Ike for good, and over several years, launch her solo career, pursuing a dream of performing in stadiums. Craig goes into depth concerning the history of this branch of Buddhism and the embrace of Buddhism in Black America.

He also describes what he calls Turner’s “combinatory religious repertoire” in which she draws upon all her religious influences although Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism remains central. A quote from Vanity Fair (1993), cited by Craig may give a sense of this:

“I do something about my life besides eating and exercising and whatever. I contact my soul. I must stay in touch with my soul. That’s my connection to the universe….I’m a Buddhist-Baptist. My training is Baptist. And I can still relate to the Ten Commandments and to the Ten Worlds [a concept from Soka Gakkai]. It’s all very close, as long as you contact the subconscious mind. That’s where the coin of the Almighty is….I don’t care what they feel about me and my tight pants on stage, and my lips and my hair. I am a chanter. And everyone who knows anything about chanting knows you correct everything in your life by chanting every day” (p. 175)

Craig goes own to recount how she used chanting to prepare herself to connect with audiences in concerts. And he recounts the slow climb from smaller venues to arenas, the struggle and prejudice she encountered with getting recording contracts with American companies and the much more favorable reception she enjoyed in Europe leading to her move to England and eventually Switzerland, where she married again.

The final chapter records her retirement after her Wildest Dreams concert tour, where she filled stadiums, in 2009. In her remaining years, she pursued one final dream, to teach what she had learned, releasing several recordings sharing religious teaching. Her life after 2013 became increasingly a struggle with declining health as she suffered a stroke, kidney disease and later, cancer. Her last US appearance was in 2019 at the New York debut of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. She died May 24, 2023.

Craig offers an in-depth account of how Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism profoundly shaped the second half of Turner’s life, and offers her as an example of the experience of other Blacks who followed her path into Buddhism. One senses that for Turner, and perhaps others, the church remained culturally formative but failed to offer the spiritual resources found in Buddhism. As much as I wished she would have found the support to leave an abusive partner from the church (even her mother supported Ike against her) and found in the spiritual practices of the church, what she needed to sustain her in her performing life, I’m grateful for the solo career she achieved, her body of work, and the preservation of her life from the violence many women do not survive. Ralph H. Craig, III has added an important, though religiously divergent account, to Eerdmans Library of Religious Biography.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Beatles

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The Beatles: The Biography, Bob Spitz. New York: Little, Brown, 2005.

Summary: A biography of the band from its beginnings, rise, Beatlemania, studio work, and demise, with mini-biographies of each of the Beatles, their manager, Brian Epstein.

One of those “where were you?” moments for those of us of a certain age is “where were you when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show for the first time?” I was a fourth grader, watching them on my grandparents television while the adults tut-tutted about the “long hairs” and their music. Inside, I was fascinated, as were all my classmates, especially the girls, who talked endlessly about “my favorite Beatle.”

The 2005 “biography” of the Fab Four brings back all those memories and so much more–much that was fascinating and some that I’d rather not have known. Spitz traces the history of the band from its beginnings with John Lennon and The Quarrymen, the meeting with Paul McCartney, the Liverpool years and the various combinations of musicians including the fan favorite drummer Pete Best whose home was a favorite hangout until he was unceremoniously ditched and Ringo brought on board on the eve of their fame. Spitz writes abbreviated biographies of each of the Beatles and their manager, Brian Epstein.

We learn how formative their time in Hamburg was and the significant advance they made under Brian Epstein’s management. Spitz takes us through all the things he did to polish their image, how they became “The Beatles,” his efforts to get them recorded and promoted, and the mistakes he made in setting up recording contracts. As their records hit the charts and they toured Great Britain, we see them reach the “toppermost of the poppermost.” Then Ed Sullivan. America. Beatlemania with its surging crowds, shrieking and swooning girls, and ever-increasing danger to the Beatles leading to their end of touring in 1966.

Spitz takes us behind the scenes and we see the genius of the songwriting duo of Lennon-McCartney as well as the eventual strains in their relationship, the guitarwork and growing skill of George and how Ringo not only provided the musical foundation for the band but also a certain emotional glue. We learn what it was like to record at Abbey Road. We observe the self-effacing genius of George Martin, who never profited beyond his modest salary, helping with the innovative work on albums like “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Spitz reminds us of the trip to India to learn meditation as the band sought both to grow spiritually and mend the growing artistic and personal rifts that would ultimately lead to their demise, particularly after Yoko Ono entered the scene, helping further alienate John from the others. We read accounts of the final recording sessions and the release of “Abbey Road” and their last live concert on a London rooftop, where amid all the tensions, they momentarily recaptured the joy of making music together.

Then there is the seamier side. The drug use beginning with amphetamines, marijuana, and eventually LSD, and in John’s case heroin, from which he was often strung out and increasingly erratic. The women. So many “birds” to have sex with, as was the case with many rockers. At one point, all were being treated for gonorrhea. There is the brilliant and sad Brian Epstein and his closeted gay life, including rough sex leaving him beaten and robbed, and his growing despair as he felt he was losing control of the Beatles, leading to his death, whether accidental or suicide, from an overdose of drugs. While they were rich, through Epstein’s mistakes and their own debacle with Apple, they foolishly lost millions.

There is the tragic. Going back to Hamburg days, the death of onetime bandmate Stu Sutcliffe, the firing of Pete Best and the way it was done. The betrayal of Lennon’s wife, Cynthia, and Paul’s girlfriend, Jane Asher. The end of the band itself, chronicled in agonizing detail. And later deaths: John, George, Linda Eastman McCartney.

This is a huge biography, coming in at 983 pages, including photos and notes. Yet it is a fascinating read that gives one a sense of the hard work it took to become “The Beatles” the genius of Lennon and McCartney, the trauma of Beatlemania, the behind-the-scenes accounts of the making of each album and so much more. At the same time, we see them as all-too-human, flawed and forming young men thrust into the fame and fortune they’d dreamed of but were not prepared to handle. What is astounding is to consider that most of the output of The Beatles took place over just seven fraught years, from 1963 to 1969. Yet they changed rock ‘n roll forever. Spitz gives us the “crowded hours” of that epic journey.

Review: Paul Laurence Dunbar

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Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, Gene Andrew Jarrett. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022.

Summary: Perhaps the definitive biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of the first African writers to achieve fame for his poetry and other writings.

On the sesquicentennial of the birth of Paul Laurence Dunbar (b. 1872), Princeton University published this extensively researched biography of a man who, arguably was one of the first great African-American poets and writers. Born of former slaves, including an alcoholic father who soon divorced his mother Mathilda, he was able to enroll in Dayton’s top high school when few African-Americans achieved more than an eighth grade education. A classmate of Orville Wright, being educated in a classically-oriented curriculum, he began writing, teaming up on several publishing efforts with Wright.

Dunbar gained the attention of influential men like James Whitcomb Riley and Frederick Douglas early on, giving him connections, the opportunities to read his poetry, and reviewing his books. This was a mixed blessing. Fellow Ohioan William Dean Howells praised an early collection of his poetry, bringing him wider notice of the literary public but also imposing the first of the “cages” Jarrett depicts that would trouble his brief, yet brilliant career.

Dialect poetry. Howells especially praised his dialect poetry, often around scenes of southern life pre- and post-Emancipation in the language and idioms people supposed Blacks to use. Throughout his career Dunbar composed poems both in formal English and dialect, the latter to satisfy the demand of the public. This also represented a larger struggle against the racial stereotypes that both shaped public taste and yet Dunbar strove to transcend. He wanted to be known simply as a great poet, not as a Black poet.

Poverty. While publishing his first collections and trying to cultivate connections who would help publicize his work, Dunbar struggled with lowly jobs such as an elevator operator in Dayton, earning a meager $4 a week while trying to help his mother. Poverty would be a cage against which he would struggle, shaping his efforts both in writing prodigiously for papers, periodicals, several musicals, one of the early Black librettists, as well as his book publishing efforts. This also necessitated relentless travel to readings, all while working at the Library of Congress, efforts detrimental to his health.

Alcoholism. Like his father, Dunbar drank increasingly throughout his life. On the one hand, it seemed to facilitate his composing, as when he turned out a school song for Tuskegee Institute on short notice and, increasingly hampered his readings when he turned up drunk. It also released violent tendencies exacerbating problems in an already troubled marriage.

A difficult marriage. Fellow writer Alice Ruth Moore came to his notice in a magazine article and they began writing, developing a deepening bond long before they met. At this time, as throughout his life, Dunbar had flirtations (and perhaps more) with a number of other woman. For this reason, she was slow to engage, and then to set a date for a wedding. Neither her parents nor Mathilda would give the couple their blessing (and Mathilda would occupy an unhealthy place in their eventual marriage). Jarrett covers at length Dunbar’s rape of Alice (when inebriated) during their engagement. Apparently she had physical injuries requiring medical attention and leave from work. It nearly broke the engagement. After several years of marriage, there was another violent incident, leading to permanent separation (though not divorce) during which she refused to respond to his attempts to apologize and reconcile. Dunbar, in declining health, purchased a home in Dayton. living with his mother.

Tuberculosis. Through most of his adult life, Dunbar was in frail health, frequently laid low by “colds” that signaled something more. Eventually, it became clear he was sick with what was then called “consumption” and is now known as tuberculosis. During his life, before the age of antibiotics, there wasn’t a cure. Dunbar even rationalized drinking as curative. A trip to Colorado brought a remission, but after his break with Alice, his condition worsened. All he could do was read and write. The end came in February of 1906, when he was but 33 years of age. He was buried in a different part of the same cemetery where his father was buried.

Jarrett not only covers the “cages” of Dunbar’s life but also how the caged bird sang. He traces his literary career, citing a number of poems. He traces Dunbar’s transition to writing several moderately successful novels as well as the previously mentioned musical collaborations. One wonders what Dunbar would have done had he lived longer or not faced the constraints he had. Yet were these constraints the very thing that drove and inspired Dunbar?

As a fellow Ohioan, I knew of Dunbar but welcome what is probably the definitive biography on Dunbar. Jarrett confirmed to me the extent of Dunbar’s greatness. He also confirmed me in his recognition of his and my favorite Dunbar poem, “We Wear the Mask,” and arguably one of his greatest, with which I will close:

  We wear the mask that grins and lies,
  It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
  This debt we pay to human guile;
  With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
  And mouth with myriad subtleties.
  Why should the world be over-wise,
  In counting all our tears and sighs?
  Nay, let them only see us, while
        We wear the mask.
  We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
  To thee from tortured souls arise.
  We sing, but oh the clay is vile
  Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
  But let the world dream otherwise,
        We wear the mask!

Paul Laurence. Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask.” from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, ) via Poetry Foundation

Review: The Political Transformation of David Tod

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The Political Transformation of David Tod, Joseph Lambert, Jr. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2023.

Summary, A biography of Governor David Tod from Youngstown, focusing on his political career and his transformation as a “War Democrat” from support of popular sovereignty to supporting the Union war effort and ultimately Emancipation.

Growing up in Youngstown, I’ve long known of David Tod as one of our most illustrious citizens. In particular, I was familiar with the Tod farm at Brier Hill, first settled by his father George, also a state lawmaker, but not a very successful farmer. David’s success as a lawyer allowed him to acquire and pay off the farm, allowing his parents to live out their years there. His act set the stage for the discovery of high quality coal, the construction of blast furnaces contributing to the growth of the iron industry in the valley and his stake in rail companies, enabling the shipment of coal and iron from the Mahoning Valley, establishing his fortune.

Beyond knowing that he served a two-year term as Ohio’s governor during the Civil War, I was unaware of the political career of David Tod. Joseph Lambert’s new book opened my eyes to the political career of Tod, from its beginnings in Warren to the statehouse. I was unaware that the first part of his career centered around Warren Ohio, where he got his first taste of politics. From 1825, when he went to read law in the firm of Roswell Stone until 1841, when his father died, Tod’s activities centered around Warren, the bustling county seat of Trumbull County, of which Youngstown, then a township, was still a part. Admitted to the bar in 1827, by 1832, he was named postmaster by Andrew Jackson. Brief stints as a councilman and as Warren’s mayor were followed by election as a Democrat to Ohio’s state senate. He left after one, two year term, returned briefly to Warren, and then took over the Brier Hill farm after his father’s death.

Lambert shows how Tod’s political activities went along with the development of business, whether speaking for other candidates, or running twice, unsuccessfully, for governor. Then, in 1847 he was named ambassador to Brazil, replacing an ambassador with a fraught relationship with the Brazilian government. Lambert shows how Tod, with no previous diplomatic experience both represented U.S interests well while winning the favor of the Brazilians. His exposure to the slave trade confirmed his personal opposition to slavery.

However, in returning to the states, he was caught up in the debates on slavery. Ohio was a microcosm of slavery, with the north being staunchly abolitionist, and southern Ohio much more favorable to the institution just across the river. As a Democrat, he was part of a national party trying to bridge sectional difference. Before the war, he supported Stephen Douglas against Lincoln and Douglas’s position of popular sovereignty and leaving slavery in the south alone, hoping it would wither of its own accord.

Lambert shows how Tod’s politics were shaped by the constitution, which upheld slavery, and how they evolved over the course of the war. Since the Union was also created by this constitution, he vigorously supported Lincoln when hostilities began. After personal efforts to raise troops, Tod, as part of a Union Party of War Democrats and Republicans was elected Governor in 1862, widely respected around the state.

This didn’t last long. His arrest of Clement Vanlandingham brought charges of being an iron-handed dictator. He faced sniping from his own party. But he met Lincoln’s calls for troups, cared for returning soldiers, and particularly the wounded, guarded the state’s borders, and managed the state’s finances. During this time, as the war progressed, he slowly moved to support emancipation and to eventually allow Blacks from Ohio to serve in the military, a significant transformation, and one that alienated him from the Democrats. After the war, he could not go back. As the 14th and 15th amendments were proposed, he moved to support Black citizenship and suffrage, the latter a corollary in his mind.

Lambert portrays Tod as tireless in campaigning, in or out of office, to the detriment of his health. He refused Lincoln’s appointment as secretary of the Treasury for health reasons. While campaigning, he suffered several “apoplectic strokes” and died of this in 1868, although Lambert raises interesting questions of whether these “strokes” may have been malarial in origin, given the description of symptoms.

The portrait of Tod is one of a savvy businessman and politician, although a man of great personal generosity and integrity. He balanced Ohio’s interests and security with unstinting support of the Union effort. He devoted significant attention to the welfare of soldiers. He handled loss with grace. And he put Union and the constitution ahead of political party, growing, albeit slowly, in his commitment to emancipation and basic rights of Blacks. Though never a presidential candidate, he might be one of Ohio’s greatest political leaders. Ohio was a key to the Union victory, and Tod’s war leadership a major factor in that. Tod has not received the attention due him. Lambert’s book remedies that. The man who said “I would not have been born anywhere else than in Youngstown if I could” lived a life that should make all of us who grew up in Youngstown proud.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Ramesses II, Egypt’s Ultimate Pharaoh

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Ramesses II, Egypt’s Ultimate Pharoah, Peter J. Brand. Columbus, GA: Lockwood Press, 2023.

Summary: Drawing heavily on archaeology, this lavishly illustrated work describes the life, historical and cultural context, and physical record of this arguably greatest of Egypt’s Pharaohs.

This is an impressive work about an impressive figure in human history. Peter J. Brand is an Egyptologist whose study focuses on the imperial age (ca. 1550–1100 BCE), during which Ramesses II ruled. He is also the “director of the Karnak Hypostyle Hall Project, which is recording, conserving, and interpreting hundreds of scenes and hieroglyphic texts carved on the walls and columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall” (from book website). In Ramesses II, Egypt’s Ultimate Pharoah, he has given us a lavishly illustrated and extensively documented account of the life of Ramesses II, who ruled longer than any other pharaoh at 67 years [some believe Pepi II in the Sixth Dynasty ascended to rule at age six for 94 years] and left more monuments to his rule than any other. The book is printed on high quality paper rendering the many full-color images of monuments, temples, and renderings of ancient paintings and inscriptions that serve as documentation of Ramesses II’s reign.

The book begins by setting the rule of the Ramessides within a chronology of the successive kingdoms of Egypt and tells the story of his family including his father, Sety 1 who ruled for just ten years, but long enough to train his son and establish him as Crown Prince. He ascended to rule in his early twenties, and immediately occupied himself with building monuments and producing heirs. A major event in his career is covered extensively by Brand, the Battle of Kadesh against the rival Hittite Kingdom, in 1274 BC. It was a near disaster, with Ramesses II nearly defeated after being ambushed. Accounts emphasize personal heroism in repelling the attack and the eventual “victory” of Ramesses after reinforcements arrive, although Kadesh remained in Hittite hands. Brand reveals an the impressive public relations effort it took to turn this near disaster into a glorious victory. The victory is disputable but Ramesses II’s courage is not. Later wars in the first two decades protect Egypt’s territories but don’t change the balance of power.

It was perhaps the realization of this that led to negotiations with the Hittites that led to the Silver Treaty in the third decade of Ramesses II’s rule. It didn’t turn the two kings into friends although Brand shares the diplomatic exchanges calling each other brothers and the snide ways each sought to assert his own greatness, even after the peace. Perhaps as extensive were the negotiations for Ramesses to marry not one, but eventually two Hittite princesses, always the way of sealing accords.

Two marks of Ramesses II’s success were his children and his Jubilees. Altogether, Ramesses sired at least 45 sons and more than fifty daughters with his various wives. For a godlike figure to have so many children was a good sign for the fertility of the nations crops, and indeed, Egypt of these years was the grainary of the Middle East. Brand gives us brief biographies of the successive heirs to the throne, three of whom pre-deceased Ramesses, We also learn of his five daughter wives.

The Jubilees both celebrated the length of his reign and were cermonies of renewal The first was held at year 30 of his reign, with twelve more Seds held at intervals of three years. Many Pharaohs never made it to the first. These were the occasion of building more monuments including the Temple at Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, the object of an extensive rescue effort when the construction of the Aswan High Dan threatened it with inundation.

Brand’s account concludes with briefer coverage of the later and twilight years, Ramesses death, and his successors, and how he has lived on including his treatment in literature and in Hollywood. There is even a fascinating account of a trip his mummy took to Paris for preservation treatments, requiring a passport and royal honors upon arrival.

And what of Israel? Most of the discussion of Israel comes in discussion of the Hollywood accounts. Otherwise, the only places it comes up in the text postdate Ramesses rule–one to Solomon’s marriage alliance with Egypt, and one to an inscription on the Stela of Merenptah, Ramesses II’s son, from 1210 BCE, listing them as an ethnic group in Canaan. Given the absence of archaeological evidence, Brand remains silent about Israel, treating them as insignificant to Ramesses II’s reign. Of course, this hinges on the dating of the exodus, which biblical scholars date between c. 1400 and 1280 BC, the latter date falling within Ramesses II’s reign and the more widely accepted.

Peter J. Brand has given us an up-to-date and illuminating account in this work, the first since Kenneth Kitchen’s Pharaoh Triumphant forty years ago. It reveals both the culture and the man behind the legends of this great ruler of Egypt at the zenith of Egypt’s power. We stand in wonder at the works portrayed in images that celebrate this Pharaoh three millenia later. While he made much of his “victory” at Kadesh, one cannot help wonder if his greater victory was the decades of peace and stability resulting from the Silver Treaty, that allowed the time and resources to build so many monuments. Brand’s work helps us appreciate one of the greatest rulers in human history, often hidden in the mists of time and legend.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: King: A Life

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King: A Life, Jonathan Eig. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Summary: A new biography of King that focuses not only on his civil rights leadership but his personal life and struggles.

The sources for the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life continue to open up as both government records and new private sources become available to researchers. Jonathan Eig, in writing this biography had access to these and offers a portrait of King that not only underscores his greatness but the complexity and humanness of the man. We have the man of peace who would talk with a man who assaulted him, forgive him and refuse to press charges. We learn of a man of courage, who knew his life would likely be ended by an assassin’s bullet. We hear the eloquence of a man who lifted us all by his “dream” and challenged our complacency with the Letter from Birmingham jail. Yet there are also the moral inconsistencies of his plagiarism of portions of his dissertation and his appropriation of material his sermons and his affairs with women and his guilt-ridden struggle with his unfaithfulness.

Other biographies introduce us to all of these. Eig takes us deeper. He explores the powerful influence of his father (also a womanizer) and his attempts to define himself apart from Daddy King, particular when this meant going against the powerful peope who were his father’s friends. Another powerful influence on his life was Coretta. Arguably, she was initially more deeply committed to civil rights than Martin but as the call upon his life became clear, she was fully on board as a partner, despite the restrictions she faced as a woman in the male world of the Black church and civil rights leadership. She endured the imprisonments, the threats on the lives of the family, the modest life they maintained. It seems she may be worthy of a biography in her own right.

Other accounts have discussed J. Edgar Hoover’s animus against King and the surveillance by the FBI that revealed many of King’s sexual affairs. Eig goes deeper into this, particularly his long relationship with Dorothy Cotton. Like David Garrow, he discusses memos of recordings at the Willard Hotel, where King was allegedly on hand as a woman was raped by a Baltimore pastor, Logan Kearse. Eig is more reluctant than Garrow to credit these, recognizing the effort of the FBI to smear King. Both note the recordings themselves remain sealed until 2027. Eig discusses at length the anonymous letter with a compilation of recordings sent to King to induce him to commit suicide. Neither King nor the FBI come out looking good here–King persists in affairs even when he knows he’s being surveiled.

Eig explores deeply King’s relationship with other civil rights leaders. I had never before realized the importance of Ralph Abernathy in King’s life. He was both alter ego and counterbalance–the trusted friend and fellow pastor with whom King could confide, laugh with, and it appears, even carouse with. Eig also develops the tensions that arose, particularly in the years after the March on Washington, a high water mark. King acted intuitively, could raise money but did not have the organizational talents sorely needed in movement leadership. Furthermore, as racist forces doubled down and President Johnson became more engulfed by Vietnam (which King opposed), it became harder for King to persuade those who felt violence was the answer, of its futility.

Eig also develops King’s opposition to the Vietnam war and his courageous stand which he knew would alienate Johnson and others. King recognized how the war would thwart the efforts of Johnson’s Great Society, robbing it of money and focus in the national agenda. He also recognized the disparate proportion of Black young men who were dying.

The book explores King’s struggles with depression, particularly as divisions and resistance developed and his attempts to address northern racism struggled. Some, no doubt was simply exhaustion as King drove himself hard to fulfill his sense of call. While never formally treated, he did consult with a psychiatrist. Mostly, it was his friends, including Abernathy who would pull him away long enough to regain equilibrium.

What Eig also gives us is a man of deep religious faith, who believed his calling was from God, whose trust was that God would carry him through, even in the daily face of death. One particularly senses this in Eig’s accounts of Kin’s last visit to Memphis and his prescient message of the night before.

Eig covers both familiar ground in this biography as well as take us deeper into the complicated man King was. King’s namesake Martin Luther once stated that “God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.” Eig shows us both a courageous leader and a grievous sinner who would be excoriated for his plagiarism and called out by #MeToo and #ChurchToo for his treatment of women. He also shows us how King’s life offered America a mirror in which to see itself and recognize the deep stain of racism. His vision for non-violence, for justice, and for a reconciled beloved community was a gift that the America of his time sadly rejected. The book reminds us of the truth we are inclined to deny and of the gift that we continue to refuse.