Most Popular Books by Taylor Branch

Former President Bill Clinton speaks intimately over seven years to his long-time friend, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, about what it''s like to be president. Providing illuminating commentaries on major issues, these conversations depict Clinton as a principled man with a restless intellect. b&w photographs.

“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.”

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement. In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the Civil Rights Movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage. Beginning with the Nation of Islam and conflict over racial separatism, Pillar of Fire takes the reader to Mississippi and Alabama: Birmingham, the murder of Medgar Evers, the "March on Washington," the Civil Rights Act, and voter registration drives. In 1964, King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Branch''s magnificent trilogy makes clear why the Civil Rights Movement, and indeed King''s leadership, are among the nation''s enduring achievements. In bringing these decades alive, preserving the integrity of those who marched and died, Branch gives us a crucial part of our history and heritage.

At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 is the final volume in Taylor Branch''s magnificent history of America in the years of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War, recognized universally as the definitive account and ultimate recognition of Martin Luther King''s heroic place in the nation''s history. The final volume of Taylor Branch''s monumental, much honored, and definitive history of the Civil Rights Movement (America in the King Years), At Canaan''s Edge covers the final years of King''s struggle to hold his non-violent movement together in the face of factionalism within the Movement, hostility and harassment of the Johnson Administration, the country torn apart by Vietnam, and his own attempt (and failure) to take the Freedom Movement north. At Canaan''s Edge traces a seminal era in our defining national story, freedom. The narrative resumes in Selma, crucible of the voting rights struggle for black people across the South. The time is early 1965, when the modern Civil Rights Movement enters its second decade since the Supreme Court''s Brown decision declared segregation by race a violation of the Constitution. From Selma, King''s non-violent Movement is under threat from competing forces inside and outside. Branch chronicles the dramatic voting rights drives in Mississippi and Alabama, Meredith''s murder, the challenge to King from the Johnson Administration and the FBI and other enemies. When King tries to bring his Movement north (to Chicago), he falters. Finally we reach Memphis, the garbage strike, King''s assassination. Branch''s magnificent trilogy makes clear why the Civil Rights Movement, and indeed King''s leadership, are among the nation''s enduring achievements.

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.

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.”

Autobiography of the star basketball player who was voted Most Valuable Player in the NBA five times.

"College athletes are not slaves," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Taylor Branch in "The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA." "Yet to survey the scene-corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as ''student-athletes'' deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution-is to catch the unmistakable whiff of the plantation." Branch, best known for his award-winning trilogy about the civil rights movement, "Parting the Waters," argues that decades of greed and self-interest have finally caught up with the NCAA and that the organization is poised to collapse under the weight of its own hypocrisy. From Reggie Bush and Cam Newton to Ohio State and the University of Miami, it''s been one big sports scandal after another. But the true scandal, argues Branch in this gripping, deeply reported narrative, is the parasitic structure of college sports, a business that generates billions of dollars in revenue every year yet fails to provide even workers'' compensation for its young performers. The outrage, he writes, is "not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it''s that two of the noble principles by which the NCAA justifies its existence-''amateurism'' and the ''student-athlete''-are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes. The tragedy at the heart of college sports is not that some college athletes are getting paid, but that more of them are not." A portion of "The Cartel" was first published in different form in the October 2011 issue of "The Atlantic," and it set off a firestorm of controversy and an avalanche of praise. "Sports Illustrated''s" Frank Deford, speaking on National Public Radio, said Branch''s story "may well be the most important article ever written about college sports." Now the full, landmark story is available. "The Cartel" is classic investigative journalism of the highest order, by one of America''s most admired historians. "The Cartel" is published by Byliner through a partnership with "The Atlantic." ABOUT THE AUTHOR Taylor Branch is the author of the three-volume history of the civil-rights movement, "America in the King Years," for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among his many other books are "The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President" and "Second Wind" (with Bill Russell).