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Pillar of Fire
Pillar of Fire
America in the King Years 1963-65  
By Taylor Branch
This edition: eBook, 768 pages
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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, picking up where the Pulitzer Prize-winning Parting the Waters left off. It is a monumental chronicle of a movement that stirred from Southern black churches to challenge the national conscience during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. In this masterly continuation of the narrative, Branch recounts the climactic struggles as they commanded the national and international stage.

This audio adaptation of Pillar of Fire covers the upheavals of the years 1963-1965 -- 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 frank, revealing portraits of the major players: LBJ, Malcolm X, Bob Moses, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. Participants on all sides stretched themselves and their country to the breaking point over the meaning to simple words: dignity, equal votes, equal souls.

Richard BernsteinThe New York TimesBy the time you have finished [Pillar of Fire], you feel almost as if you have relieved the era, not just read about it.
James GoodmanThe Boston GlobeThis is jet-propelled history.
Jeff ShesolThe Washington PostPolitics and personalities, ambition and imagination, triumph and tragedy.
David M. ShribmanThe Wall Street JournalOne part biography, one part history, one part elegy...a vast panorama...powerful.
Jon MeachamNewsweekPillar of Fire is a magisterial history of one of the most tumultuous periods in postwar America. Branch's storytelling is strong, his storytelling colorful. Reading Branch, it is easier to see why even the most remarkable revolutions are never complete.
Alan WolfeThe New York Times Book ReviewAs he did in Parting the Waters, Branch brings to these events both a passion for their detail and a recognition of their larger historical significance.
Scott EllsworthThe OregonianMagnificent...the birth of a masterwork akin to Carl Sandburg's Lincoln or Shelby Foote's Civil War.
Ray JenkinsThe Baltimore SunBranch has an uncanny ability to penetrate the most obscure nooks and crannies of the past to provide a whole new perpective on the Sixties...
Bill MaxwellSt. Petersburg TimesPillar of Fire, a history of symbiosis and epiphany, records King's vision and the disparate moral currents that forced America to redefine itslef in light of its failures to live up to its own principles of freedom.
Trevor ColemanDetroit Free PressThe strength of Pillar of Fire lies in Branch's unsurpassed ability to bring the reader into the moment, enabling one to almost feel the tension of the times.
Ray RickmanThe Providence Sunday JournalPillar of Fire is truly a great book, one that everyone should read and that every library should place on proud display.
William W. StarrThe State (Columbia, S.C.)A book of far-reaching political and cultural dimension, dense and comprehensive, riveting despite it's length, and recounting the fits and starts of the battle for equality for all Americans regardless of color.
William McKeenThe Orlando SentinelPillar of Fire is truly and epic.
Harry MerritLexington Herald-LeaderPillar of Fire's great strengths are Branch's mastery of detail and his powerful insights, gained from so many years of research and almost 2,000 interviews. The result is a familiar story made fresh
-- and one that Americans of all races and colors would do well to know and understand.
Patrick BeachAustin American-StatesmanThis is epic history, and the events chronicled herein still resonate today.
Deirdre DonahueUSA TodayBranch wonderfully brings alive the times and the tensions. Pillar of Fire is an important detailed work of history that describes one of the most crucial periods of American history since the Civil War. Branch movingly captures a time when people felt compelled to take risks and take action. It is a book that should be read.
R.Z. SheppardTimeBranch's narrative is rich in historical ironies. At all levels Branch's scholarship reveals a nation whose unexamined ideals are about to collide with unanticipated realities. In his upcoming final installation of America in the King Years, Branch faces the challenge of resolving dissonances with a unifying fugue. Until then, be grateful for two-thirds of a monument.
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