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.
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"A bit more confused and chaotic than Branch's epic first novel. There are more players on the field, and the author has the tricky problem of having to reintroduce some characters while not belaboring it too much for those who read the first installation recently. The first two hundred pages overlap in time with the end of the last book, so a good third of the book has the "Previously on the show..." feel. Once I realized how much of the book was a cursory rehash of events the author had already explained, I did a lot more skipping around. Still, the depth and scope of the book is breathtaking. I'll probably read the last book in the series, though I'm not anticipating that I will be nearly as bowled over."
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Tia (4 out of 5 stars)