KING: A Life, by Jonathan EigGrowing up, he was called Little Mike, after his father, the Baptist minister Michael King.
Only in college did he drop his first name and began to introduce himself as Martin Luther King Jr.
This was after his father visited Germany and, inspired by accounts of the reform-minded 16th-century friar Martin Luther, adopted his name.
King Jr. was born in 1929.
One writer, quoted by Jonathan Eig in his supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable new biography, “King: A Life,” called it “the richest Negro street in the world.”Eig’s is the first comprehensive biography of King in three decades.