I believe Dr. King is one of the most important, heroic figures in our modern history. His character, compassion, empathy, eloquence, and wisdom are, in my opinion, unparalleled in American history and he's certainly one of the people I most admire. It's impossible not to see the parallels between the challenges he faced during his lifetime and in today's national and global events, yet we lack leaders, nationally and internationally, with even a few of the qualities of Dr. King

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., published in 2001, should be required reading in high school, college, and graduate school around the world. It contains letters, essays, speeches, and other writing from early in his adult life to the very end and I could not help but feel the pain of our collective loss as I read through the book. It is heartbreaking, yet at the same time awe-inspiring and humbling and caused me to reflect on the character of the life I'm living and also how we, as a collective community, are handling the challenges we face today. I wish everyone could read, or at least listen to, this book. A bonus of the audio book version is that it contains a lot of the live recordings of Dr. King...in listening to them, it seems clear that we've lost the gift of oration today...