The election of Barack Obama as America's first black president has spawned a renewed interest in the iconic US civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Writing with verve, clarity and acute insight, Hodgson traces King's life and career from his birth in Atlanta in 1929, the campaigns that brought about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of '65, to his assassination in 1968. Hodgson covers every aspect of King's life: the Black Baptist milieu in which King grew up, his theology, political philosophy, physical and moral courage, his insistence on the injustice of inequality, his campaigning energy, and his repeated sexual infidelities.