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Redemption: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last 31 Hours by Joseph Rosenbloom

Read by J.D. Jackson, with the recording produced by Beacon Press

Reviewed by Ryan Paul Winn

Recasting an icon as mortal, Joseph Rosenbloom studies Martin Luther King Jr. in his final day and then some. In 1968, King’s status was sapped by a pivot to the Poor Peoples’ Campaign and his soul torn by rising black violence. Out of this miasma King conceives and delivers an impassioned and prescient sermon. J.D. Jackson’s reading render three-dimensional the characters and events of King’s assassination, enhancing Rosenbloom’s nuanced account of an American’s unplanned exit from this world.

 

Ryan Paul Winn is a columnist and media critic who’s rarely without an audiobook or his earbuds. When not writing or teaching in the Liberal Studies department at College of Menominee Nation in Keshena, Wisconsin, he can be found researching overlooked history in local and national archives.