Marshall Frady (1940–2004)

Like that of most famous men, Martin Luther King Jr.'s life is one largely remembered as a series of events: the Montgomery bus boycott, the Birmingham marches, his "I Have a Dream" speech, his march in Selma, and his assassination in Memphis. While this list includes its most triumphal moments, it does little to cover the full range of his activities or the private life he lived. This is what Marshall Frady provides in this brief book. In a little more than 200 pages, he conveys the span of King's tragically short life, from his Atlanta boyhood through his early ministry to the activism that made him famous and helped to transform the nation. Though the familiar highlights are there, he adds to the reader's understanding elements that King's achievements have overshadowed, such as his failed campaign in the Georgia town of Albany, or the brutal resistance his efforts faced in St. Augustine, Florida. Their inclusion certainly qualifies the scope of what Kind accomplished, but it also helps readers to better understand the size of the challenge King and other protestors faced in challenging Jim Crow segregation.

Frady adds little that is new to the story of King's life, yet his analysis is informed by his personal experiences covering King as a young reporter in the 1960s. His account of the St. Augustine protests is a particular highlight of his book for that reason, as he recounts the events he covered there with his firsthand observations of the events he chronicles. These he uses to inform his portrait of a fatalistic, sometimes depressed figure, one who felt fully the burden of expectations and embarked upon his many campaigns with the expectation that he would die as a result. That loss stalks its pages may reflect an excessive degree of hindsight on Frady's part, but it helps to underscore the risks King took throughout his life and the loss we all suffered with his assassination barely a dozen years after he first emerged as a leader of the civil rights movement. For anyone seeking an accessible introduction to that life and an overview of what he achieved in it, Frady's book is a good place to start.… (altro)

I’d like to suggest a good read. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life (2002) by Marshall Frady is one of the Penguin Lives biography series books. Nearly all of these books are excellent short bios, well worth a few hours. The series contains numerous cultural greats. The list includes people such as Andy Warhol, Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Smith, Elvis Presley, Mao Zedong, Napoleon and Buddha. Marshall Frady’s book offers a splendid and lively summary of Martin Luther King, Jr’s. life and work. The series is simply wonderful.

Born in 1940 in Augusta, Georgia to a Southern Baptist pastor, Marshall Frady became a journalist. He worked for Newsweek and the Saturday Evening Post. Also, as a television journalist, he received an Emmy for a documentary about mercenaries, Soldiers of the Twilight. Frady died of cancer on March 9, 2004. Jessie Jackson presided over the memorial service and soon afterwards the IRS swept in to collect on a $200,000 debt. His papers were later purchased by Emory University for $10,000.

The book received glowing reviews from magazines, newspapers and journals, however not on Library Thing. This review should be considered positive because I thoroughly enjoyed the read and was impressed by the author’s tragic and epic stylistic approach. He set the atmosphere in the use of vocabulary and tempo. Brilliant book taking the reader from the early life to the tragic death of a great American personality. I highly recommend this book as an intro to King.

I must admit, I had never read a full book on this topic or the Civil Rights movement. This is a good first. Indeed the read actually caused me to reflect on my failure to appreciate and learn about this topic in American history. Shame on me.… (altro)

I cannot believe Penguin published such a poorly written book. Worst book I have read in many years. The author goes out of his way to flaunt his extensive vocabulary (or more likely, that he owns a thesaurus). More importantly, he gives a pass to King's numerous extra-marital affairs and to the plagiarism of his doctoral dissertation. King is a complex and important figure. A good biography helps the reader to deal with the good and the bad -- not to overstate the good and downplay the bad. I chose this book only because I assumed that Penguin would publish a strong biography of King. I will be more selective in the future.… (altro)