Author opens 2025-26 JCC Cultural Arts & Book Series

Reviewed by Bernie Bellan, Jewish Post & News (Winnipeg)

With over 75 million record albums sold and 118 songs that she either wrote or cowrote, Carole King’s prolific, fabulously successful career has been the subject of several books and numerous articles, including her own memoir, published in 2012.

Now, in the just-released Carole King: She Made the Earth Move (Yale University Press), journalist Jane Eisner takes a fresh look at King’s life, including her two most recent marriages to men who were abusive, physically and emotionally.

Eisner worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years including as a reporter, editor, and executive. Later, she spent 10 years as editor of The Forward. The book is the latest in the Yale University Press Jewish Lives series. Eisner opens Dayton’s JCC Cultural Arts & Book Series, Oct. 19.

King has given very few interviews over the years, and Eisner was not able to speak to her directly.

“I’ve taken on the challenge to write an interpretive biography of a musical icon who is brilliant, accomplished, and complicated,” Eisner writes of her approach to her book. “Though I’ve admired her music since Tapestry was released, I wanted to understand it from the inside out. To do that, I studied piano for two years, which enabled me to dissect her musicality and describe what musicians call the ‘Carole King chord.’”

I didn’t realize Eisner had no background in music until I finished her biography. A great many parts of the book dissect the songwriting experience in detail. Eisner aims to explain the genius behind King’s best works, and how incredibly varied her style was.

As Eisner explains, King’s musical talent was on clear display from a very early age. Her mother, Eugenia (née Cammer) discovered that young Carol (who added an “e” to her name at 17) was gifted musically by age 3. Eugenia taught Carol piano.

In Eisner’s account of King’s childhood, her early years come across as very happy. Her father, Sidney Klein, was a firefighter in Brooklyn, where the family lived. Along with several other Jewish firefighters, Sidney purchased land at Waubeeka Lake in Connecticut. Young Carol loved her summers there, and Eisner suggests that was a factor when, after having achieved fabulous success in her 30s, King threw it all away and went to live in the Idaho wilderness — with two husbands in succession.

King has remained largely silent about what led her to make such a major shift in her life — the move away from Los Angeles’ music scene to virtually cut herself (and three of her four children) off from the world. Eisner uses her reportorial skills to pore through previous accounts of King’s life (including her own memoir), along with firsthand interviews with people who played key roles in her life.

Eisner also refers to King’s younger brother, Richard, who was intellectually disabled and shunted off to live in an institution when he was only 3. Since King rarely referred to him, Eisner speculates she was somewhat traumatized by that. She also examines how much being Jewish meant to King.

Carole King: She Made the Earth Move is not meant to be an exposé of any sort. Eisner’s years of newspaper experience shine through as she tells a compelling story of genius punctuated by frequent heartbreak.

Jane Eisner, author of Carole King: She Made the Earth Move, opens the JCC Cultural Arts & Book Series, 2 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 19 at University of Dayton’s Roger Glass Center for the Arts, 29 Creative Way, Dayton. In partnership with UD’s Society of Professional Journalists chapter, Department of Music, Alumni Chair in the Humanities, and Jewish Federation’s Women’s Philanthropy. With performances by UD Department of Music student ensembles and faculty. $10, free with valid student ID. Register here.

To read the complete October 2025 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.