Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63

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Simon and Schuster, Apr 16, 2007 - Biography & Autobiography - 1088 pages
13 Reviews
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In Parting the Waters, the first volume of his essential America in the King Years series, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch gives a “compelling…masterfully told” (The Wall Street Journal) account of Martin Luther King’s early years and rise to greatness.

Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American Civil Rights Movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations.

Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War.

Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness and illuminates the stunning courage and private conflict, the deals, maneuvers, betrayals, and rivalries that determined history behind closed doors, at boycotts and sit-ins, on bloody freedom rides, and through siege and murder.

Epic in scope and impact, Branch's chronicle definitively captures one of the nation's most crucial passages.

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - nbmars - LibraryThing

This is the first of Taylor Branch’s magnificent three-volume chronicle of the civil rights movement and the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Each volume takes its title from aspects of the Old ... Read full review

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Steve_Walker - LibraryThing

The Civil Rights movement did not come overnight. It was decades in the making. Parting the Waters is probably the best written history of the early days of the civil rights movement. Taylor Branch ... Read full review

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About the author (2007)

Taylor Branch is the bestselling author of Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63; Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65; At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968; and The Clinton Tapes. He has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

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