Stewart Burns

To the Mountaintop is a biography . It's core, really, is studying the role of religion in both King's life and the movement for equal rights. King earned a Ph.D. at Boston University in Theology, and this was meshed with his Southern Baptist origins. He viewed his strategy in the importance of religion to the African-American community, which experienced God in a very personal way (carried over from Africa.) To struggle for human rights was both just and religiously mandated. But King was also a pragmatist and mixed in Ghandi's non-violence. He believed in his use of rigorous non-violence to the end of his life. But toward the end he broadened his agenda of evil: the U.S. presence in Vietnam, the negative aspects of capitalism among the poor. Burns is not a terrific writer and passages lag, especially his explanation of theological and philosophical issues.… (altro)

This is both a panoramic and highly detailed view of the struggle for civil rights in the U.S. Burns is a overly academic as he seeks to convey the theological beliefs of King, a man who earned his PhD in the subject at Boston University. One learns how ambivalent he was over all the fame; he yearned to be a simple minister. This is a similar refrain from Theodrakis' Last Temptation of Christ. As the author explains King's competing drives, the language reads like a graduate school text and is heavy slogging. But this work enables you to understand the sources and chronology of the struggle and the biggest dispute: should the movement remain nonviolent (and is that Ghandian strategy applicable to the U.S.?), or should Black nationalism come to the fore..… (altro)