Muddying the waters; the years of Martin Luther King.

• Author: Caro, Robert A.

The latest installment of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson was either praised or damned by reviewers this spring. Both sides had their points: Caro's work, like his first book about Johnson and his outstanding biography of Robert Moses, is for the most part brilliant, but his distaste for Johnson led him to exaggerate LBJ's flaws and downplay his virtues, while sanctifying LBJ's old political rival Coke Stevenson, who was, to put it gently, less than fully deserving of the honor. All of this got us to wondering how even such a clearly heroic figure as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might fare under Caro's approach. Fortunately, we didn't have to wonder long, because, thanks to a postal mix-up, we received the following manuscript in the mail.

-The Editors Introduction:

Martin Luther King Jr.'s life was essentially about a drive for power and glory, power not just to achieve justice, but power for its own sake: naked, ruthless power that would crush anything that stood in its way, and a hunger for glory so profound that he would jeopardize the health and safety of his family and colleagues. Cunning as he was, he was able-through the help of his aides and cronies-to construct a legend about himself, a myth about his nobility and selflessness. It is a myth that has been perpetuated by other biographers, and it is a myth that, under the weight of the evidence I've gathered, collapses.

Finally, after spending 15 years interviewing 12,893 people who knew King or lived through his times, I am able to rip off the veil of secrecy that surrounds him and tell the real truth about his life. He had a dark side and a bright side, yet, sadly, in the conflict that makes up a central part of this work, the spring, 1963 desegregation campaign in Birmingham, we see the traits that not only helped fuel his drive for worldwide fame, but also hurt innocent people: deceit, megalomania, promiscuity, cynical pragmatism.

The Birmingham campaign is also important because it tells us about the transformation of the politics of protest in America. Martin Luther King brought a slick, sophisticated new politics to a sleepy southern town unable to compete with his Machiavellian wiles. King's new politics, fueled by enormous sums of hidden cash, used the mass media to create instant martyrs out of Birmingham's protesters. It also created a "devil figure" in the person of Eugene "Bull" Connor, the commissioner of public safety whose career has been distorted and misunderstood by untold numbers of journalists. King faced, in the idealistic, earnest simplicity of Bull Connor, someone ill-equipped to do battle in the new media age, a beloved, folksy populist who harkened back to a quieter, more graceful, and, in some ways, more honest era. The true story of Bull Connor has been all but lost to history, and I intend to collect that oversight. Birmingham or bust

It was Martin Luther King's last chance. If he lost the upcoming campaign to end segregation in placid but booming Birmingham, his position as the most prominent Negro civil rights leader would be eroded, perhaps destroyed-and so would his chance to become (his private goal) the most influential Negro in world history, with the unlimited power, fame, and access to attractive, willing civil-rights workers that would entail. He was ready to do anything-absolutely anything-to hold on to his status and power: run roughshod over longstanding southern traditions, violate disorderly conduct ordinances, provoke violent responses from mild-mannered policemen, bed down sexy white women from prestigious publications-whatever was necessary. Now 34, he had already earned himself a cover story in Time magazine, made hundreds of speeches a year, led a successful boycott of the segregated bus system in Montgomery. But that was years ago, in the mid-fifties, and his rapid rise had been slowed. Cities across the South were still segregated, and other leaders-John Lewis, Roy Wilkins, Harry Belafonte-and strategies-the sit-ins in Nashville and Greensboro, voter registration drives in Mississippi-had captured press attention. King was no longer the center of attention, and a friend recalled, "he could not stand it."

And, these days he was being branded a loser, and all because he had been outsmarted by a white man several months earlier in Albany, Ga. Laurie Pritchett, the white sheriff, went out of his way to avoid brutality with the marchers. And each time King was arrested, Pritchett freed him in short order, before the national press could turn him into a martyr. King emerged from jail each time deeply depressed. His solitary day-long prayer vigil in front of the jail, with him begging on his knees to be arrested, didn't work either, no matter what provocative stunts he pulled-calling Sheriff Pritchett a "white redneck faggot" or shouting...