Thank you Simon & Shuster for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.  

Mr. Book just finished John Lewis, by David Greenberg.

The book does an excellent job tracing Lewis’s entire career. The author had access to Lewis, as well interviewing about 250 people who knew him. Greenberg also obtained valuable FBI files and documents while researching this book. It is an extremely thorough look at Lewis’s entire life.

One of the many highlights of the book was the discussion on the march on Washington in 1963. There was plenty of good information on what was going on behind the scenes and of all of the preparations. Lewis was the youngest speaker at the event, which of course included King’s I Had a Dream speech. The book’s treatment of the march on Montgomery, which included the infamous incident of Lewis being beaten in Selma, was also excellent.

One of the great things about history books is all of the little tidbits that one learns throughout the book. One good example from this book was the Johnson administration had invited Lewis to attend the signing ceremony for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But, Lewis turned them down, since he was too busy with his work in Mississippi, as part of the Freedom Summer, at the time.

The book gives good coverage of Lewis’s relationships with people such as Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond and Bill Clinton. And speaking of Clinton, the book’s discussion of Lewis switching his support from Hillary to Obama was another one of its very many strengths.

Prior to reading this book, I had read two of this author’s previous books. I gave each one of them A’s. But, this one outperformed the others. It got an A+, which means I have inducted it into my Hall of Fame. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A+ equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

After I finished this book, I also preordered the audiobook version so I will be able to enjoy it again when it is released on October 8 (same date as the print and Kindle versions).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews.

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on June 5, 2024.