Spiritual memoirs have comforted this author, says Richard Lamey.

This is an engaging and inspiring book by the writer, teacher, and Lutheran minister Richard Lischer. Partly through the lens of the pandemic, he reflects deeply on memoir and autobiography, and how that tradition of writing is a blessing to the Christian reader on their own journey. We can learn how to live well from other people’s lives. We can learn confidence in God from fellow pilgrims

Martin Luther King Jr. once characterized the times in which he lived as “life’s restless sea.” His own turbulent voyage on that sea has been well documented. We know its ports of call by heart: the Montgomery bus boycott; failure in Albany, Ga.; triumph in Birmingham, Ala.; “I Have a Dream”; Selma, Ala.; Chicago; Lyndon B. Johnson and Vietnam; the Poor People’s Campaign; death at 39; “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” They are set in stone on the Tidal Basin and inscribed in the American memory. These are the chapters of every King biography—and the challenge to every biographer.

Jonathan Eig’s new biography, King: A Life, is more than up to the challenge. It will take its place among the foremost of the many treatments of King.