Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for At Canaan's Edge by Taylor Branch - Available

At Canaan's Edge

America in the King Years, 1965-68

by Taylor Branch
Joe Morton
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    February 1, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780743564472
      • File size: 286412 KB
      • Duration: 09:56:41

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Joe Morton has a strong, deep, and serious voice, and he presents this compelling book about the American Civil Rights Movement, 1965 to 1968, with gravitas. Morton carefully communicates the tense moments in the struggle. There is some limited voice characterization that works well. This work is Branch's third in a three-volume series. The earlier volumes received many awards, and this work has already attracted critical acclaim. In this volume, Branch presents a richly textured portrait of the movement, with special attention on the struggle for voting rights, as well as the involvement of key political figures of the time, such as President Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover. M.L.C. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 2, 2006
      Morton's rich voice offers a quiet, understated reading that heightens the intensity of this momentous period of American history, 1965-1968. Branch's 1,300-page book describes in great detail the interplay of personalities, politics and history. This abridgment is so well done that every paragraph feels packed with drama and nothing seems to be missing. The last in Branch's trilogy on Martin Luther King and 20th-century America recounts in known and new carefully researched detail the triumphs, tragedies and moments from Selma to King's assassination. Listeners witness King's constant need to make on-the-spot Solomon-like decisions, the deepening friendships and growing dissension among movement leaders over strategy and tactics (especially nonviolence vs. black power) and the exposure of racism as a national rather than a Southern phenomenon. Branch offers insight into J. Edgar Hoover's malevolent maneuvering, Lyndon Johnson's courage and cowardice, the confluence of the civil rights marches, the Vietnam war, the antiwar movement and race riots across America before and after King's death. Branch's final summary is moving and painful.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from December 19, 2005
      The engrossing final installment of Branch's three-volume biography of Martin Luther King Jr. maintains the high standards set in the previous volumes, the first of which won a Pulitzer Prize. Moving from the protest at Selma and the 1966 Meredith March through King's expanding political concern for the poor to his 1968 assassination in Memphis, Tenn., Branch gives us not only the civil rights leader's life but also the rapidly changing pulse of American culture and politics.
      The America we find in this last chapter of King's life is on fire—the Republican Party has begun to court white Southern voters; the Civil Rights movement itself has fractured; King sees bold challenges to his teaching of nonviolence in the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles. King himself has evolved, spreading his interests beyond civil rights to become a more outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and of poverty. A turning point in King's legacy, says Branch, was his housing actions in Chicago in the summer of 1966. This work "nationalized race," showing that it wasn't just a Southern problem, and ensured that King would go down in history as much more than a regional leader.
      As a literary work, Branch's biography is masterful. About midway through, the author begins to foreshadow King's death—by, for example, quoting his 1965 statement to a filmmaker: "I would willingly give my life for that which I think is right." If Branch indulges in predictable throat clearing about the lessons from King's life that endure in America today—well, that is to be expected. This magisterial book is a fitting tribute to a magisterial man. 24 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW
      . 150,000 first printing; first serial to
      Time magazine; 15-city author tour.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
Make a recommendation