Why We Can't Wait

Dr. King's remarkable account of the struggle for civil rights in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, tracing the history of the movement back to its beginnings three centuries ago and looking to the future.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

An impassioned life of the most inspirational figure of twentieth-century America.

Marshall Frady, the reporter who became the unofficial chronicler of the civil rights movement, here re-creates the life and turbulent times of its inspirational leader. Deftly interweaving the story of King's quest with a history of the African American struggle for equality, Frady offers fascinating insights into his subject's magnetic character, with its mixture of piety and ambition. He explores the complexities of King's relationships with other civil rights leaders, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, who conducted a relentless vendetta against him. The result is a biography that conveys not just the facts of King's life but the power of his legacy.

My Soul is Rested

The almost unfathomable courage and the undying faith that propelled the Civil Rights Movement are brilliantly captured in these moving personal recollections. Here are the voices of leaders and followers, of ordinary people who became extraordinary in the face of turmoil and violence. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956 to the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, these are the people who fought the epic battle: Rosa Parks, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, Fannie Lou Hamer, and others, both black and white, who participated in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, voter drives, and campaigns for school and university integration.

Here, too, are voices from the "Down-Home Resistance" that supported George Wallace, Bull Connor, and the "traditions" of the Old South-voices that conjure up the frightening terrain on which the battle was fought. My Soul is Rested is a powerful document of social and political history, as well as a magnificent tribute to those who made history happen.

Better Day Coming

From the end of postwar Reconstruction in the South to an analysis of the rise and fall of Black Power, acclaimed historian Adam Fairclough presents a straightforward synthesis of the century-long struggle of black Americans to achieve civil rights and equality in the United States. Beginning with Ida B. Wells and the campaign against lynching in the 1890s, Fairclough chronicles the tradition of protest that led to the formation of the NAACP, Booker T. Washington and the strategy of accommodation, Marcus Garvey and the push for black nationalism, through to Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and beyond. Throughout, Fairclough presents a judicious interpretation of historical events that balances the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement against the persistence of racial and economic inequalities.

The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches

Brian MacArthur's Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Speeches was described as 'a compelling read' (Observer) and 'a means of re-creating a turbulent century' (Sunday Times). In this superb companion volume, he brings together the words of over a hundred men and women - from Moses to Mandela - who changed the world through the sheer power of their oratory.

Gladstone and Disraeli, or Pitt and Fox before them, forged the politics of their age through ferocious verbal combat in the House of Commons. Abraham Lincoln transformed forever the way Americans interpret the Civil War and their national destiny. Like Cicero or Cromwell, Churchill, Kennedy and Martin Luther King inspired generations with their hopes and dreams; others have given equally eloquent expression to the rights of man, the wrongs of women and the cause of the Irish freedom. The world's most effective speakers, argues MacArthur, have always known how 'to move hearts or inspire great deeds, to uplift spirits or cast down enemies'. His definitive collection demonstrates that claim with many thrilling examples.