The essential moments of the Civil Rights Movement are set in historical context by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the magisterial America in the King Years trilogy—Parting the Waters; Pillar of Fire; and At Canaan’s Edge.

Taylor Branch, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning America in the King Years trilogy, presents selections from his monumental work that recount the essential moments of the Civil Rights Movement. A masterpiece of storytelling on race and democracy, violence and nonviolence, The King Years delivers riveting tales of everyday heroes whose stories inspire us still. Here is the full sweep of an era that transformed America and continues to offer crucial lessons for today’s world. This vital primer amply fulfills Branch’s dedication: “For students of freedom and teachers of history.”

“Right out of the pages of our lives…Compelling portraits placed in the excitement of a period when oppressed and powerless people moving together changed themselves and their country profoundly and permanently.” —The New York Times Book Review

The essential moments of the Civil Rights Movement are set in historical context by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the magisterial America in the King Years trilogy.

A masterpiece of storytelling on race and democracy, violence and nonviolence, The King Years delivers riveting tales of everyday heroes whose stories inspire us still. Here is the full sweep of an era that transformed America and continues to offer crucial lessons for today’s world told in “remarkable, meticulous detail” (The Wall Street Journal).

With this vital primer, Branch relates the dramatic story of how the Movement evolved from a bus strike to a political revolution, and brings this historic achievement to a wider audience, sufficiently fulfilling Branch’s dedication: “For students of freedom and teachers of history.”

“There will be the inevitable comparisons to Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln and Shelby Foote’s The Civil War, two other masterworks that use the grand sweep of history to lay barethe nation’s soul.”