In Pillar of Fire, the second volume of his America in the King Years trilogy, Taylor Branch portrays the civil rights era at its zenith. The first volume, Parting the Waters, won the Pulitzer Prize for history. It is a monumental chronicle of a movement that stirred the Southern black churches to challenge the national conscience during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. In this masterly continuation, Branch recounts the climatic struggles as they commanded the national and international stage.This audio adaptation of Pillar of Fire covers the upheavals of the years 1963-65 - Dallas, Mississippi Freedom Summer, the far-reaching effects of civil rights legislation, the violent reaction to the end of legalized segregation, Vietnam, Selma. And it provides a frank, revealing portrait of the major players: LBJ, Malcolm X, Bob Moses, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. Participants on both sides stretched themselves and their country to the breaking point over the meaning of simple words: dignity, equal votes, equal souls.
Branch brings to bear fifteen years of research in a seminal work of history. Pillar of Fire captures the intensity of the legendary King years, when the movement broke down walls between races, regions, sexes, and religions, and between America and the larger world - an incandescent chapter in America's distinctive quest for freedom.