The second volume of Taylor Branch's ambitious history of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his times begins, approximately, in the spring of 1963 and ends two years later with the assassination of Malcolm X and the first events that culminated in the massive marches in Selma, Alabama in the early spring of 1965. This is narrative history in the grand style. As the author explains, "I have tried to make biography and history reinforce each other by knitting together a number of personal stories along the main seam of an American epoch" (p. xiv). In the first volume of the series, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (1988), Branch succeeded admirably in his efforts, in part because the narrative could focus on dramatic events like the Montgomery bus boycott, the Birmingham demonstrations, and the March on Washington, where King was at center stage. That volume also revealed to many readers for the first time the still largely hidden yet intense public-private struggle between King and the Kennedy administration over the general direction and control of the civil rights movement. All of this material offered a sharp focus and high historical drama, which the author laid out for a national reading audience; in the process he also revealed his great gifts as a writer and as a historian and a very well known writer.The second volume of Taylor Branch's ambitious history of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his times begins, approximately, in the spring of 1963 and ends two years later with the assassination of Malcolm X and the first events that culminated in the massive marches in Selma, Alabama in the early spring of 1965. This is narrative history in the grand style. As the author explains, "I have tried to make biography and history reinforce each other by knitting together a number of personal stories along the main seam of an American epoch" (p. xiv).
