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Summary: Gave me a new understanding of Dr. King
Review: First, I would like to thank Dr. King and all of the many supporters of civil rights that had to suffer through so many years of hatred and abuse. Second, this book opened my eyes to something that should have been visible from miles off. This was not just a good man who happened to be a different gender. This man was hungry for God. As a Christian it is so hard to find public figures that represent Christ in their lives. This was not just a man who fought for a race of color, but a man who fought for a race of humans.
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Summary: Should be required reading in school.
Review: I could not put it down. I could hear Dr. King reading this book to me. I could see the anguish on his face as he spoke of the Montgomery Bus Boycott or the lessons learned in Albany. I never knew the extent of his education until reading this book; not just in school but the researching he did on his own. All of this is evidenced quite vividly in the letter from a Birmingham jail.I loved this book.
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Summary: Rachel Suh
Review: I personally do not like to read any sort of autobiographies or biographies but this book was different. This book is supposed to be the autobiography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Clayborne Carson, who did a extensive amount of research. I was very pleased that he included alot of original and personal documents of Dr. King. This book lets the readers put on Dr. King's mask and see for themselves what it might have been for him on a more personal level. I found this book very interestingly touching and I recommend it to anyone intrested in Dr. King's life, his works or his philosophy.
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Summary: EXCELLENT BOOK
Review: I really liked the book. I thought that it was well written and easy to understand. I realized that it wasn't being wrote by Dr. King himself, so I had to read carefully and try to pick up MLK's ideas, instead the author's ideas. However, it was still a great book. I felt that Clayborne Carson did a good job when he composed the book. He took into consideration all of King's life, and the experiences which most influenced his fight towards freedom. I really liked the speeches delivered by Dr. King, as well as all of his other writtings. I like reading them because they are very motivational, and King uses powerful, profound words, which are convey his point in a very strong, and meaningful way. The book is excellent to read, it is a little bit long, but it features large print. I would recommend it to anyone. I think that everybody should read this book, just so everybody could understand where racism and prejudice comes from. We have to realize that all this is a thing of the past, and we have to put it behind us.
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Summary: Great Attempt
Review: I think a great attempt at writing MLK's autobiography. Unfortunately, like King's life, there could have been so much more had he lived longer than he did...
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Summary: A Different View
Review: I usually do not favor any autobiographies or biographies of any sort when reading, but this book was different because it was an autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Clayborne Carson. Carson did a great job voiceing Dr. King and I was especially pleased with Dr. King's original, personal notes and writings included in the book. I recommend this book to anyone intrested in Dr. King's life and his philosophies.
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Summary: This GenXer was inspired
Review: I was born the same year that MLK was assassinated, and grew up hearing snippets of his speeches on TV documentaries. I appreciated his stature as a leader in the abstract. Listening to his speeches on these tapes redoubled my esteem. I felt like I was there; I was really moved. The effect is different from, and maybe better than TV footage, because the mind's eye is not trapped watching the preselected pictures. You think more about MLK's message. Also, I give credit to Carson for setting the stage for each speech with good background information. Levar Burton reads it with passion in his voice. My one criticism is that it is not really an autobiography, as it says on the cover. The background to MLK's speeches (which are the real recordings) is read in the first person, but is not something that he actually wrote. With more effort, the editors could have strung together enough original material by MLK and his correspondents to make a coherent narrative. For example, the one volume collection of Lincoln's writings edited by Roy Basler is just selected letters in order by date, but it reads like a gripping drama. That's a more honest and better approach. Still, I am really pleased and proud to be the owner of these MLK tapes. I give them six months before I wear them out.
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Summary: A Philosopher and a Poet
Review: King's autobiography was pieced together beautifully and fluidly, allowing readers to tangibly probe the brilliant, analytic, compassionate, and clever mind of a man whose valor on the battle field of non-violence forever altered the conciousness of America. King successfully placed the idealistic rhetoric and concepts that pride this nation up on trial that they might be implimented in the hearts and minds of all people. He is a great writer and a critical thinker whose descriptions and critiques of capitalism/communism, Ghandi and Satyagraha, Montgumery, Selma, "Bombingham", The Black Panthers, morality and violence, and more, have changed my perspective on history. This is a great book and a fascinating story about the most quintessential segment of American History.
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Summary: Required reading!
Review: Martin Luther King, Jr., is without a doubt one of the most influential and pivotal figures in twentieth-century history. In addition to his work as a Civil Rights leader, his role as a father and pastor, he also was an extensively published writer. However, he never had the chance to write an autobiography in the traditional sense. We as readers in the present day and the future have lost the private details that might have been fleshed out in a proper autobiography, but this skillfully crafted work by Clayborne Carson has given us a religious and political autobiography, revealed in King's almost countless papers (published and unpublished), interviews, letters, sermons and public statements.
Carson, author and editor of many books relating to the Civil Rights struggle, edited a collection of King's speeches entitled 'A Knock at Midnight', and was selected by the King estate to put together this in conjunction with (according to Carson) dozens of staff and student workers forming part of the King Papers Project. Carson used particular methodology consistently in his reconstruction - that of relying primarily on the words of King himself (utilising early drafts of later writings to discern the difference between authorial and editorial intentions) and developing them as if this overall narrative account was constructed near the end of King's life.
King's autobiography begins at the beginning, with is childhood as a preacher's kid (who was himself a preacher's kid, who was himself a preacher's kid, etc.). King said, 'of course I was religious.... I didn't have much choice.' King explains the different strands in his life, that of being both militant and moderate, idealistic and realistic, as beginning here. Here he developed questions ('how could I love a race of people who hated me?') and some answers (he learned that racial injustice was paralleled by economic injustice, and realised that poor white people were exploited also).
King's call to ministry and call to ethical and prophetic witness in the world developed through his schooling at Morehouse College, Crozer Seminary, and Boston University, where he developed interest in theology and social philosophy that would lead him to eventually to his ideas of civil rights activitsm. This would not take practical shape, however, until he was back in the South and working at churches and participating in actual events. He describes his involvement with Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Movement as a mountaintop experience, which also led to an awakening, both in King and in the community, of the power of nonviolent action a la Mahatma Gandhi.
It is almost incomprehensible to read this autobiography and realise that in a span of barely more than a dozen years (Rosa Parks was arrested for her action in December of 1955; King was assassinated in 1968) so much of what we consider to be the central history of the Civil Rights struggle occurred. Within the pages of text, King talks about the struggles of the common people and the dealings with the powerful, from the police in Alabama jurisdictions to dealing with federal government officials and organisations.
In the midst of all of this work, King managed to remain a family man, devoted to his wife and children, and a tireless worker in the church. Carson admits to not being able to develop too much of an interior autobiography in these kinds of sections (as even in King's private papers and writings, too much remains unrecorded), but his life in this regard still comes through many aspects of his writings, sermons and speeches.
This is an incredible book, and should be read as a required part of the education of an American, as it recounts a remarkable and astonishing part of history that continues to shape the direction of the nation to this day.
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Summary: Who can possibly speak for MLK?
Review: My struggle with the book was a result of Carson's choice to write the book in first person, as if MLK's words were his. Bad call. It operated more as a distraction for me than a glimpse into King's mind, forcing me to continually stop and wonder whether this was in fact what King thought or if it was conjecture and educated guessing. I disagree with that apporach wholeheartedly. Carson, whom I understand was commissioned to write this book by the King estate, would have been better off to write a biography using these previously unavailable documents rather than trying to speak for a dead man. And a great one, at that.
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