Book Review: “John Lewis: A Life” by David Greenberg

By Terri Schlichenmeyer  You give, and you give, and you give. No problem. If you can be of service to your community, then that’s what you’ll do. You’ll volunteer where you’re needed. You’ll offer up your time to organize events and gather other helpers. You’ve dedicated your life to public service because, as in the new biography, “John Lewis: A Life” by David Greenberg, you’ve got it to give. Born into a large but poor family in 1940, John Lewis grew up dodging chores in his father’s fields, in favor of time spent reading anything he could get his hands on. Lewis’s extended family – numbering in the hundreds – never minded much. They knew young John as someone who had big plans for getting off the farm and making something of himself. Though he was already a victim of Jim Crow laws, and racism kept him from the books and education he craved, Greenberg says that “John’s teenage years coincided with the emerging civil rights movement … .” and that became Lewis’s focus. He avidly followed the radio broadcasts of Martin Luther King, Jr., who became a beacon for him. When it was time to choose a college, Lewis...