Jonathan Eig is the bestselling author of six books, including his most recent King: A Life, which was featured on Obama’s Reading List of 2023 and was hailed as a “monumental” new biography of Martin Luther King Jr. by the New York Times.
Jonathan’s previous book, Ali: A Life, won a 2018 PEN America Literary Award and was a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize. His works are translated into more than a dozen languages. He served as consulting producer for the Ken Burns-directed PBS series Muhammad Ali. Esquire magazine named Ali: A Life one of the 25 greatest biographies of all time. Joyce Carol Oates called it “an epic of a biography” that “reads like a novel.”
His first book reached No. 10 on the New York Times bestseller list and won the Casey Award. His books have made the best-of-year lists in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, TimeLine Theatre in Chicago is soon staging his fourth book, The Birth of the Pill, as a theatrical production.
Beginning his writing journey at 16, Jonathan Eig worked for his hometown newspaper, The Rockland County (N.Y.) Journal News. Afterward, he studied journalism at Northwestern University. Then he worked as a reporter for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, The Dallas Morning News, Chicago Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
The Today Show, NPR’s Fresh Air, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have all featured him as a guest. According to his parents, his greatest claim to fame is his name’s appearance in a Jeopardy question, which a contestant correctly solved for $200. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children and shares office space with the laundry machines.
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 Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.
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The definitive biography of an American icon, from a New York Times best-selling author with unique access to Ali’s inner circle.
Jonathan Eig’s Ali reveals Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding important new light on his politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition. Ali is a story about America, about race, about a brutal sport, and about a courageous man who shook up the world. |
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Spanning the years from Sanger’s heady Greenwich Village days in the early twentieth century to trial tests in Puerto Rico in the 1950s to the cusp of the sexual revolution in the 1960s, this is a grand story of radical feminist politics, scientific ingenuity, establishment opposition, and, ultimately, a sea change in social attitudes. Brilliantly researched and briskly written, The Birth of the Pill is gripping social, cultural, and scientific history.
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The real story of how the federal government finally apprehended and convicted America’s most notorious criminal, Al Capone.
Drawing on recently discovered government documents, wiretap transcripts, and Al Capone’s handwritten personal letters, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Eig tells the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the nation’s most infamous criminal in rich new detail. From the moment he arrived in Chicago in 1920, Capone found himself in a world with limitless opportunity. Within a few years Capone controlled an illegal bootlegging business with annual revenue rivaling that of some of the nation’s largest corporations. Along the way he corrupted the Chicago police force and local courts while becoming one of the world’s first international celebrities. Legend credits Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” with apprehending Capone, but Eig shows that this wasn’t so. In Get Capone, the man known as “Scarface” emerges as a complex man, doomed as much by his ego as by his vicious criminality. This is the real Al Capone. |
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A chronicle of the 1947 baseball season during which Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier is a sixtieth anniversary tribute based on interviews with Robinson's wife, daughter, and teammates that covers such topics as his relationship with fellow players, the St. Louis Cardinals' proposed boycott of the Dodgers, and Robinson's associate with segregated hotel roommate and sportswriter Wendell Smith. 125,000 first printing.
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Lou Gehrig was a baseball legend—the Iron Horse, the stoic New York Yankee who was the greatest first baseman in history, a man whose consecutive-games streak was ended by a horrible disease that now bears his name. But as this definitive new biography makes clear, Gehrig’s life was more complicated—and, perhaps, even more heroic—than anyone really knew.
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If we listen to the real King, he can still teach us: –Yes, it’s possible to a radical and win the support of the mainstream and the political establishment.
–A flawed man can live his by the high moral standards and devote himself to the common good.
–It is possible to engage in dialogue (and even love) our enemies.
–Income inequality is not a requirement of capitalism.
Though we live in an age cynicism, of division, King believed we would get to the Promised Land. If we listen to his words, if we embrace his message, and if we accept his contradictions, we might get there yet.
How I Learned To Love Sports And History (In That Order) Throughout American history, sporting events have helped unify and shape the nation. But we often overlook the impact of sports on our comprehension of American history.
In this personal reflection, Jonathan Eig describes how his obsession with sports led to his fascination with history, and how a kid who once wanted only to play center field for the Yankees became one of the nation’s leading writers of historical biographies that transcend sports.
Eig will explain how his groundbreaking biography of Lou Gehrig changed our understanding of an American hero; how he earned the trust of Jackie Robinson’s wife in writing an intimate portrait of Robinson’s first season in major-league baseball; and how his childhood love for Muhammad Ali helped him begin to understand race in America.
As he ties it all together, Eig illustrates the manner in which athletic competition has served as a force for justice and equality, how all the subjects of his books — Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Al Capone, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, and…yes, even the birth-control pill — have a connection through sports.
A Muslim, A Christian, And A Jew Walk Into A Bar How did a Jewish journalist end up writing the definitive biographies of America’s most famous Muslim (Muhammad Ali) and its most famous Christian (Martin Luther King Jr.)?
Jonathan describes how Ali and King helped shape his own spiritual and religious journey.
What does it mean to believe? How do you apply your religious beliefs in the secular world? And what does one do when the religious and secular world’s conflict?
What moral lessons can we all learn from the religious journeys of Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King?
Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life won the New-York Historical Society’s 2024 Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History. The Zalaznick Book Prize recognizes the best book of the year in the field of American history or biography.
Bookriot ran a piece on the 2024 Audie Award winners including King: A Life.
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig, narrated by Dion Graham, wins the 2024 Audie Award in the Best Nonfiction Narrator category.
Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life has been shortlisted for the 2024 Mark Lynton History Prize.
King: A Life is shortlisted for the 2024 J. Anthony Lukas Prizes. The prizes are given as part of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and by the Columbia University School of Journalism.
King: A Life is longlisted for the Plutarch Award. Administered by Biographers International Organization (BIO), the Plutarch Award is awarded to the best biography of the year by a committee of five distinguished biographers from nominations received by BIO members and publishers.
Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life has been selected as a finalist for the 2023 National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) Awards in the Biography category.
Jonathan Eig won the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Awards in the Nonfiction category with King: A Life.
New York Times, What Book Should You Read Next?
Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life on Obama’s Reading List of 2023
Profile of Jonathan Eig for the Chicago Tribune.
Listen to the Apple podcast Chasing Ali – Jonathan Eig’s Pursuit of Muhammad Ali
The New Definitive Biography of Martin Luther King Jr.: NYT
Commentary’s review of King — A Great Man, Warts and All
Jonathan Eig on The Michael Shermer Show
King: A Life featured in best book of the year and book lists from major media outlets and retailers including: The Best Books of 2023, as chosen by The Economist (12/1), The New Yorker’s The Best Books of 2023: Essential Reads (11/29), The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2023, NPR’s Books We Love 2023, Kirkus’ Best Nonfiction Books of the Year, Barnes & Noble’s 10 Best Audiobooks of 2023, Chicago Public Library’s Favorite Books of 2023, The Smithsonian’s Ten Best History Books of 2023, The Wall Street Journal’s Holiday Gift Books: Biography, Financial Times’ Best Books of 2023: Critics’ Picks, TIME Magazine’s The 100 Must-Read Books of 2023, Washington Post’s The Ten Best Books of 2023, Amazon’s Top 20 Books of the Year, Amazon’s Best Books of 2023, Amazon’s Top 20 Biographies & Memoirs of 2023, Amazon’s Top 20 History Books of 2023, BookPage’s The Best Nonfiction of 2023, and the Top 20 of Audible’s The Best of 2023 list.
"[King is] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . The most compelling account of King’s life in a generation.” —Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post
"No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig’s sweeping and majestic new King . . . Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome." —Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Hailed by the New York Times as "the new definitive biography," King mixes revelatory new research with accessible storytelling to offer an MLK for our times.
Praise for Ali: A Life "Jonathan Eig’s masterful new biography of the champ is both captivating and highly relevant to the current discussions on race in America." - Seattle Times
"Jonathan Eig’s biography will not be the last word on The Champ, but it does a remarkable job of synthesising the warring elements in Ali’s life." - The Times
"Each blow echoes on the pages of Jonathan Eig’s relentless, image-altering biography 'Ali: A Life,'" - The Wall Street Journal