Parting the Waters

The first volume of Taylor Branch's America in the King Years series follows the fight for civil rights from the closing Eisenhower years to the killing of President Kennedy. At its center is the rise of Martin Luther King Jr., while the narrative also moves into the Kennedy White House, where John and Robert Kennedy balanced calls for justice against J. Edgar Hoover's deceptions. Branch covers the Montgomery bus boycott, sit-ins, the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Children's Crusade and wider Birmingham campaign of 1963, and the March on Washington, tracing the courage, private conflicts, deals and rivalries behind them. Branch is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the series runs to three volumes.

It appears on a list of every book Barack Obama recommended during his presidency, among titles he named as lasting favorites.