That Old, Rugged Cross

As the nation prepares to celebrate for the second time the federal holiday marking Martin Luther King's birthday, the civil rights leader sometimes seems in danger of being transformed from a flesh-and-blood hero to a gauzy legend. Now a provocative new biography based on interviews with his closest associates and examination of FBI files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act sheds a revealing new light on King's human side and on the vicious secret pressures he faced from the FBI. The complex and convincing portrait drawn by David Garrow, associate professor of political science at New York's City College, describes...