"The most comprehensive, the most thoroughly researched and documented, the most scholarly of the biographies of Martin Luther King Jr." (Henry Steele Commanger, Philadelphia Inquirer)

Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Drawing on interviews with those who knew King, previously unutilized material at Presidential libraries, and the holdings of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta, Mr. Oates has written the most comprehensive account of King's life yet published.... He displays a remarkable understanding of King's individual role in the civil rights movement.... Oates' biography helps us appreciate how sorely King is missed." (Eric Foner, New York Times)

By the acclaimed biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Nat Turner, and John Brown, Stephen B. Oates' prizewinning Let the Trumpet Sound is the definitive one-volume life of Martin Luther King Jr. This brilliant examination of the great civil rights icon and the movement he led provides a lasting portrait of a man whose dream shaped American history.