Rating: 
Summary: An Essential Part of Any Library
Review: This is a book that truly merits the label "must reading." It played a role in changing my own thinking on politics and history when I first read it in the early 1990's. During my "College Republican" days, my view of Martin Luther King, Jr. was not especially favorable, and I was almost totally ignorant of the history and background of the civil rights movement. But after reading Taylor Branch's book, I could no longer shut my eyes to the hard truths to which he bears brilliant witness.Martin Luther King is the central figure in Branch's narrative, but the book is much more than a biography, as befits its subtitle, "America in the King Years, 1954-63." For example, Branch begins his account with the stormy tenure of Vernon Johns as minister at Montgomery, AL's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church--at which church Johns was replaced by a young man still often known as "Mike" King. By broadening his account beyond King's own experiences, Branch accurately conveys how the civil rights movement was far more than just the activities of a few well-known leaders. Branch's research would do credit to any professional historian. He conducted hundreds of interviews and worked with a vast amount of primary source material. His writing is compelling, repeatedly capturing the intensity of both public and private events. Even though the hardcover edition is over 900 pages, when I first read it I found it incredibly hard to put aside.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic History of the Civil Rights Movement
Review: This is an epic. It discusses the early years of the Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of Martin Luther King Jr. and those around him. The cast of characters ranges from the cantankerous Vernon Johns - a hobo preacher with a doctorate - to the truly bizarre and paranoid J. Edgar Hoover, seeking to destroy king and those around him based on what can only be described as bogus and hyped intelligence of communist infiltration, to the young idealistic members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Comittee, to a President and Attourney General (JFK and RFK) who don't know what to think and really just wish the whole problem would just go away. It is a long haul (921 pages) and very emotionally draining so be prepared but it is worth every page and very much due the Pulitzer prize that it earned.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: What a great book! Taylor Branch has done an outstanding job with the history of the early years of the Civil Rights Movement in America. He does a great job with a mini biography of Dr. King that digs into his education and thinking which really illuminates the subject. The background on all of the other main players in this important chapter in our nation's history are equally well done. A fine book that was difficult to put down.
Rating:
Summary: inspiring
Review: What can you say about "Parting the Waters," Taylor Branch's history of the early King years and the Civil Rights struggle in the 1950s and early 1960s other than to say it inspires, angers, and awes? I have nothing negative to say about this book. Branch makes vivid a period of history already being whitewashed and forgotten. I did not know how violent the reaction to Civil Rights was. I did not know how courageous the members of CORE, SNCC, and SCLC were to withstand to the torrent of abuse, threats, and violence simply to demand their rights. Today's conservative politicians will have us believe that the Civil Rights' movement was a brief, aberrant moment that has passed. But being so recent, we know that undercurrents still exist today, that the bully racists who terrorized Civil Rights' marchers are still alive today. And with the struggle reaching its desperate crescendo around the right to vote, the voting irregularities in the South during the 2000 election seems doubly suspect and should serve as a poignant reminder that the battle for Civil Rights is ongoing. Thanks to Taylor Branch for so clearly and dramatically presenting the information to me in a volume. He has truly done a service with this book by keeping alight the memory of the heroic struggle for freedom.
Rating: 
Summary: An engrossing summary
Review: When I picked up this book I wasn't particularly interested in Martin Luther King. I wanted to find out more about the Civil Rights era. For someone of my generation (30ish), I was only vaguely aware of the major events of the civil rights movement. This book has a series of excellent narratives detailing some of the major events of the movement (bus boycott, freedom rides) that were vivid and disturbing. I was moved by the passion of the peaople involved on both sides of the color line.
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