Jonathan Eig’s MLK biography ‘King: A Life’ is among nonfiction National Book Award nominees

A comprehensive new biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, a memoir on family by the prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and an exploration of the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s are among 10 books on the nonfiction longlist of the National Book Awards. The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, also released its poetry longlist Thursday, a day after announcing 10 nominees each in the categories of young people's literature and books in translation. Jonathan Eig's “King: A Life" is a nonfiction nominee, along with Nguyen's “A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial,” Donovan X. Ramsey's “When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era,” Ned Blackhawk's “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History” and Prudence Peiffer's “The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever.”