When Harlem Nearly Killed King: The 1958 Stabbing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Deftly recreates the political reformism, high-maintenance egos, and petulant jealousies that … remain prevalent in this nation’s sociopolitical psyche. – Boston Globe

When Harlem Nearly Killed King spins the tale of a little-known episode in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.–how, in 1958, King was stabbed by a deranged black woman in Harlem, and then saved by Harlem Hospital’s most acclaimed African-American surgeon. In Pearson’s hands, the life-threatening episode becomes, in a sense, a mortal danger to the soul of a nation struggling against wave after wave of crisis.

Hugh Pearson is a former editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal.