You gotta love the title! And the writing matches up in Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for his Assassin by Hampton Sides
Although it's hardly a page-gripper -- Hampton Sides takes the slow, rich approach -- the story of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Earl Ray is fascinating. Sides starts the story several weeks before the tragedy and interlaces the movements and the lives of the two men together until they fatally intersect and then part again.
Like Sides, I was very young when King was killed. I was too old for the story of the civil rights movement to be included in my history class and too young to remember it. For better or worse, I'm more familiar with the mythic proportion that King was elevated to since (possibly, partially as a result of) his death. Sides' reportage, then, for me at least, provides some badly needed historical context.
Clearly, Sides has done his research and does an excellent job of piecing together the myriad fragments to put the whole picture together. He removed more than one blind spot in my perception of the period, including the reminder of how hated King was by not just the racist South but politicians who considered him and what he represented a threat. Bringing King back to his humanly flawed reality brought the man to life for me -- and, ironically, has made me appreciate even more the remarkable gifts he had as a single-minded man in pursuit of a selfless goal.
Ray was a shameless racist -- as were many in his day -- and Sides does little to explain what, beyond that, drove him to murder King. He doesn't attempt to apply more modern psychological assessments or criminally profile Ray and all but dismisses any suggestion of a conspiracy. The research and the writing don't warrant such conjecture. Sides leaves that to others. His stands as excellent and highly readable history.
Although it's hardly a page-gripper -- Hampton Sides takes the slow, rich approach -- the story of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Earl Ray is fascinating. Sides starts the story several weeks before the tragedy and interlaces the movements and the lives of the two men together until they fatally intersect and then part again.
Like Sides, I was very young when King was killed. I was too old for the story of the civil rights movement to be included in my history class and too young to remember it. For better or worse, I'm more familiar with the mythic proportion that King was elevated to since (possibly, partially as a result of) his death. Sides' reportage, then, for me at least, provides some badly needed historical context.
Clearly, Sides has done his research and does an excellent job of piecing together the myriad fragments to put the whole picture together. He removed more than one blind spot in my perception of the period, including the reminder of how hated King was by not just the racist South but politicians who considered him and what he represented a threat. Bringing King back to his humanly flawed reality brought the man to life for me -- and, ironically, has made me appreciate even more the remarkable gifts he had as a single-minded man in pursuit of a selfless goal.
Ray was a shameless racist -- as were many in his day -- and Sides does little to explain what, beyond that, drove him to murder King. He doesn't attempt to apply more modern psychological assessments or criminally profile Ray and all but dismisses any suggestion of a conspiracy. The research and the writing don't warrant such conjecture. Sides leaves that to others. His stands as excellent and highly readable history.
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