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    Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, Part I - 1954-63
    Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, Part I - 1954-63
    Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, Part I - 1954-63
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, Part I - 1954-63

    Written by Taylor Branch

    Narrated by CCH Pounder and Joe Morton

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateFeb 1, 1998
    ISBN9780743548120
    Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, Part I - 1954-63
    Author

    Taylor Branch

    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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    Reviews for Parting the Waters

    4.5/5

    14 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Well, this certainly deserved the Pulitzer Prize. Over a thousand pages of names, events, drama, pain, blood, suffering, injustice, success and hope. Almost impossible to take in one long reading (but it was on loan, so I persevered) because of the hundreds of characters and dozens of threads (can one say 'plots'?). Taylor still manages to write with a light touch and good humour. And this is just Part 1 of the trilogy!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I was assigned this book in college and liked it so much I kept it and have bought the two sequels. It's not a biography of MLK, but since he figures prominently, it does talk a lot about his life. It's also about the impact he had on America and how politics affected him. It's a thick book, very comprehensive and well-researched. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in the Civil Rights Era.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The first volume of a three volume series of America in the King Years. It won the Pulitzer Prize for History. The trilogy will be the standard for all other histories of the civil rights movement to be judged as literature. The people who stirred the nation and changed the lives of all Americans during the years 1954-1963 are covered by Branch. In addition to King and his twelve disciples, we are presented with insights into the thinking of John and Robert Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, and Lyndon Johnson.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      a very detailed and insightful study of the civil rights movement from the bus bocott to the march on washington. shows america at its best, the men and women, that led the battle for rights and america at its worest. those that did all they could to oppose the movement. I highly recommend this book

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      - As a work of craftsmanship, this book is flawless. In 900 pages, I did not find one sentence that could have been written any clearer, and despite many disparate threads and points of views I never once wished the material had been organized differently.- As a work of history, this book is stunning. I was born in the 1960's, so I didn't experience these events first hand, and yet they hadn't made it to the history books either. So this book was my first introduction to the events and people that shaped the world where I grew up. I frankly had no idea what Dr. King had accomplished: All I knew was that he had a dream and that he was assassinated. After reading this book, finally I understand why we have a Dr. Martin Luther King holiday.- I never really understood how bad conditions in the South were. I knew African-Americans did not have the right to vote, did not have equal schools, and did not have economic opportunity; I knew they were subject to unequal justice, arrested for crimes on flimsy evidence; I knew they could be beaten and law enforcement would look the other way . . . but I didn't know that they could be beaten, or pistol whipped, or even shot, and that they would be the ones arrested -- for disturbing the peace. I didn't know that in response to efforts to register new Negro voters, the Mississippi legislature passed laws requiring that names of new voter applicants be published in the papers for two weeks prior to acceptance, and allowing current voters to object to the moral character of applicants. I didn't know that Georgia sentenced Dr. King to four months on a chain gang because he was driving with an out-of-state license. All branches of state government -- executive, legislative, and judicial -- actively persecuted people attempting to exercise their civil rights.- Meanwhile, the federal government spent most of its resources investigating civil rights leaders for ties to communism, rather than investigating the people who were bombing, shooting, and beating citizens who were attempting to integrate society and register to vote. When I read how the FBI and the Kennedy administration twisted the intelligence apparatus to persecute Dr. King, I was reminded of Dick Cheney and the missing WMD, and I better understood some people were so critical of the Patriot Act. - In 900 pages Taylor Branch covered a whole lot that I didn't know, so I could go on for my own 900 pages; instead I will just say that if you are interested in American history, this book would be well worth your time.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Volume one of Taylor Branch's masterful and highly detailed survey of the Civil Rights movement. This book opens the reader's eyes to the many many brave people who worked and sacrificed with Dr. King during this amazing time.Read this book in June, 2011
    • 4/5
      Did not dock a star for the 20 missing pages in the paperback edition I read. Accidents will happen. I enjoyed how smoothly this was written--the thing is huge, so it was a nice bonus while I propped up the brick, that it was also a decent read. This is not always true with biographies. The book is very detailed about the civil rights movement and the times in general. It's a triple biography that adds names, details and background to all that black and white footage I watched while eating supper with my mom. History and TV trays are forever inseparable in my mind.I found the chapter about his schooling especially interesting. He's learning to preach. The young preachers trade licks like guitar players. There are forms to play with and tricks of the trade. They work on their moves. Put the patterns in the right hands and it's quite an art. I can see now, how that cross-over happens between early rock n' roll and preaching. This is the first of 3 volumes. Excellent photographs.
    • 4/5
      The civil rights movement in general and King in particular.
    • 5/5
      It is difficult to adequately classify Taylor Branch's monumental Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, the Pulitzer Prize-winning first volume in Branch's trilogy on the American Civil Rights era. The book is audacious in its scope, brimming with new insights from dozens of interviews with participants. It is epic, not just in narrative or research but in length.?In attempting to sort out the religious, cultural, and political waters that propelled and buffeted the Civil Rights movement, Branch explicitly hypothesizes that "[Martin Luther] King's life is the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years." This has many significant consequences, beginning with the genre of the book, which is a mix of biography and narrative history. Branch balances these genres well in his detailed, but also deliberately focused, writing.?And while a focus on King seems almost pedestrian from a Civil Rights perspective, Branch is arguing more broadly, I think, and arguing that King is the single most important figure of the age, period. Carefully, but emphatically, Branch is signaling a reassessment of other key figures in the 1960s, especially John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Robert Kennedy. He sees King's story as more central to the era than JFK's Camelot, LBJ's Vietnam, and RFK's populism borne out of social anxiety.?Whether Branch entirely succeeds in this provocative thesis is a matter of some debate, particularly as it relates to the other over-arching issue of the period, the Cold War. Branch, through his detailed examination of King's close associate Stanley Levison, who was regarded as a Communist agent by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, seems to argue that the Communist threat to the United States, especially domestically, was sensationally overstated by the FBI. While this is true, it does not directly override the Communist threat globally to the US in the era.?But this meta-argument is irrelevant to the other historical content of Branch's extremely fine book. He incorporates dozens of characters from the era in detail, emphasizing the multiple people beyond King who shaped and forwarded the Civil Rights movement. While mostly chronological, Branch is not handcuffed by the day-to-day timeline, which allows him to highlight the different perspective's of the people involved "in making history" through their day-to-day decisions and actions.?Branch is at his best when dealing with King though, especially as he explores the relationships that King had with the other major participants of the era: government officials, allies, intellectuals, and religious leaders. In fact, it is these last participants who really benefit from Branch's careful analysis: even though Branch focuses extensive attention on the political aspects of the era, he never loses sight of the movement's roots in African-American Christianity (actually, almost entirely Baptist as opposed to African Methodist). And he demonstrates what an odd figure King was among the Baptist ministers of the time, which led to some strained relationships with King and other pastors, including some of those who worked closely with him.?In summary, the book is highly recommended. It is elegantly written, and shows the fruits of Branch's significant research. It is informative, entertaining, and moving, and certainly stands as one of the best volumes about both the Civil Rights movement and the American decade chronicled.