To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, Black power vs. civil rights. Peniel Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. While serving as a revisionist biography of Malcolm X and MLK, this is also a detailed portrait of the movement and era that they came to define.