January: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

'At Canaan's Edge' chronicles dramatic campaigns in Mississippi and Alabama, King's tormented alliance with Lyndon Johnson, his painful break with Stokey Carmichael over black power, and persecution by Hoover's FBI. This book brings the decades of the Civil Rights struggle alive and preserves the integrity of those who marched and died.

Celebrated Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson is the director and editor of the Martin Luther King Papers Project; with thousands of King's essays, notes, letters, speeches, and sermons at his disposal, Carson has organized King's writings into a posthumous autobiography.

A riveting account of the origins and legacy of "I Have a Dream" Forty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. electrified the nation when he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King's prophetic utterances started the long overdue process of changing America's idea of itself. His words would enter the American lexicon, galvanizing the civil rights movement, becoming a touchstone for all that the country might someday achieve.

"I am in Birmingham because injustice is here," declared Martin Luther King, Jr. He had come to that city of racist terror convinced that massive protest could topple Jim Crow. But the insurgency faltered. To revive it, King made a sacrificial act on Good Friday, April 12, 1963: he was arrested. Alone in his cell, reading a newspaper, he found a statement from eight "moderate" clergymen who branded the protests extremist and "untimely." King drafted a furious rebuttal that emerged as the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"-a work that would take its place among the masterpieces of American moral argument alongside those of Thoreau and Lincoln. His insistence on the urgency of "Freedom Now" would inspire not just the marchers of Birmingham and Selma, but peaceful insurgents from Tiananmen to Tahrir Squares.

A vivid portrait of how Americans grappled with King's death and legacy in the days, weeks, and months after his assassination On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. At the time of his murder, King was a polarizing figure -- scorned by many white Americans, worshipped by some African Americans and liberal whites, and deemed irrelevant by many black youth. In The Heavens Might Crack, historian Jason Sokol traces the diverse responses, both in America and throughout the world, to King's death. Whether celebrating or mourning, most agreed that the final flicker of hope for a multiracial America had been extinguished.

A private citizen who transformed the world around him, Martin Luther King, Jr., was arguably the greatest American who ever lived. Now, after more than thirty years, few people understand how truly radical he was. In this groundbreaking examination of the man and his legacy, provocative author, lecturer, and professor Michael Eric Dyson restores King's true vitality and complexity and challenges us to embrace the very contradictions that make King relevant in today's world.

A new evaluation of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, renowned speech, now hailed as the most powerful American address of the twentieth century Includes the entire text of "I Have A Dream" "I have a dream"--no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. King's speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the "I have a dream" speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justice--debates as old as the nation itself--and demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom

In King, Ho Che Anderson rendered Martin Luther King Jr.'s life from his childhood in Atlanta to his tragic assassination in an expressionistic visual style that propelled King's story with cinematic momentum: in doing so, he created a monumental graphic biography that liberated King from the saintly, one-dimensional, hagiographic image so prevalent in pop culture.

The first full biography in decades, 'King' mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times.

Taylor Branch, author of the acclaimed America in the King Years, introduces selections from the trilogy in clear context and gripping detail. The King Years delivers riveting tales of everyday heroes who achieved miracles in constructive purpose and yet poignantly fell short. Here is the full sweep of an era that still reverberates in national politics. Its legacy remains unsettled; there are further lessons to be discovered before free citizens can once again move officials to address the most intractable, fearful dilemmas.

Includes eleven sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with "eleven important introductions by renowned ministers and theologians of our time; Reverend Billy Graham, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Bishop T.D. Jakes, among others.

This volume examines both the speeches and writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., highlighting a variety of interpretive approaches, including rhetorical analysis, close reading, and explorations setting King's work in social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. Critical analyses offer an overview of important previous work on King's writings and speeches while also making new contributions to the study of his written and spoken works. Race, class, and gender are closely examined, along with a discussion of the skill of King's writing.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life in American History covers King's life, achievements, and challenges, placing his contributions within the context of American history.

The life story of Coretta Scott King--wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and singular twentieth-century American civil rights activist--as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to one of her closest friends Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising black parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose.

Volume two of a three volume history of the American civil rights movement, America in the King Years. This volume takes the reader from the assassination of President Kennedy and describes Martin Luther King's struggle to hold his movement together in the face of factionalism and violence.

Ripples of Hope brings together the most influential and important civil rights speeches from the entire range of American history-from the colonial period to the present. Gathered from the great speeches of the civil rights movement of African Americans, Asian Americans, gays, Hispanic Americans, and women, Ripples of Hope includes voices as diverse as Sister Souljah, Spark Matsui, and Harvey Milk, which, taken as a whole, constitute a unique chronicle of the modern civil rights movement.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DELIVERED his powerful "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963. Fifty years later, the speech endures as a defining moment in the civil rights movement. It continues to be heralded as a beacon in the ongoing struggle for racial equality. This gripping book is rooted in new and important interviews with Clarence Jones, a close friend of and draft speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr., and Joan Baez, a singer at the march, as well as Angela Davis and other leading civil rights leaders. It brings to life the fascinating chronicle behind "The Speech" and other events surrounding the March on Washington.

The classic collection of Dr. King's sermons that fuse his Christian teachings with his radical ideas of love and nonviolence as a means to combat hate and oppression.

This "landmark" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist) dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century's most iconic African American leaders   To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense versus nonviolence, black power versus civil rights, the sword versus the shield.

Drawing on a new generation of scholarship about the civil rights era in America, To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of Martin Luther King as an advocate of racial harmony to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class, and his call for "non-violent resistance" to all forms of oppression, including economic injustice.

In We Shall Overcome, America's leading scholars and activists from the civil rights years speak on a fascinating range of experiences surrounding King and his era, from his early personal religious conversion to his impact on the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; from his place in the history of the African-American church to the rise in Third World liberation struggles. A collection of papers by black artists and scholars who attended a symposium on the work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King's classic exploration of the events and forces behind the Civil Rights Movement--including his Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.