Martin Luther King Jr is remembered for his tireless work during the Civil Rights Movement and his dream that one day everyone would be treated as equals. A statue built in his memory now stands in Washington D.C. and each year, the third Monday in January is celebrated as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, an American federal holiday.

Between 1957 and his assassination on April 4, 1968, at age 39, Martin Luther King Jr. gave 2,500 speeches, wrote sermons and homilies and published five books. Meanwhile, the number of books written about King surely number in the thousands.

A Life,' spoke on a Jan. 3 episode of NPR’s 'Book of the Day' podcast about Martin Luther King Jr., and noted that MLK didn’t have plans to become a civil rights leader when he joined the Montgomery Bus boycott in 1965.