The book covers the life and achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr. who is best known around the world for his courageous crusade in the 1950s and early 1960s against the racial discrimination that was still entrenched and widespread at that time in the United States. He had to apply considerable mental strength to beat down the attitudes of powerful figures, not least in Government and perhaps nowhere more so than in the FBI. Yet Dr. King prevailed, chiefly through his extraordinary public oratory which he deployed to rally millions of African-Amricamns in the struggle. Finally, King was fierce in his condemnation of the US military campaign against what was then North Vietnam. The ferocity of his campaign probably cost him a degree of support; to some it seemed to border on treason. King had long since been killed by the early 1970s, when the US was disengaging from an increasingly ruinous and pointless conflict that he had prophetically seen as disastrous. John Webster London