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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. The first volume, Parting the Waters, won the Pulitzer Prize for History. 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...

This book concludes a 3-volume history of American race, violence, and democracy. As the book begins, King and his movement are one decade into an epic struggle for the promises of democracy. The quest to cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965 engages the conscience of the world, strains the civil rights coalition, and embroils King with the U.S. government. After Selma, freedom workers are murdered, but sharecroppers learn to read, dare...

"Todd Gitlin, the highly regarded writer, media critic, and professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, has written an authoritative and compelling account of this supercharged decade-- a decade he helped shape as an early president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and an organizer of the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War. Part critical history, part personal memoir, part celebration, and part meditation,...

Learn about the longest military conflict in United States history.

"Among the most significant subcultures in modern U.S. history, the hippies had a far-reaching impact on American society. The entrenched institutions within the political and cultural establishments that the hippies challenged, or abandoned, mainly prevailed. Yet the nonviolent, egalitarian principles of the movement, underpinned an era of civic protest that brought an end to the Vietnam War"--

In an immersive narrative, Burns and Novick tell the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film. Features testimony from nearly 100 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides.

A 7-Part History of the United States in Vietnam In 1965, the United States officially became involved in the conflict in Southeast Asia where decades of turmoil had been building since the beginning of World War II. The fall of French Indochina and the spread of Communism, catapulted the country into one of its longest and deadliest wars. The history of U.S. involvement is told in this 7 part documentary series featuring personal stories from veterans...

In the span of twelve months, America experienced the Woodstock Music Festival, Easy Rider, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, the Battle of Hamburger HIll, the birth of punk music, the Led Zeppelin invasion, the occupation of Alcatraz, and death at the Altamont Speedway. 1969 pushed the boudaries of stage (Oh!Calcutta!), screen (Midnight Cowboy), and print (Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex). We witnessed the genesis of gay rights...

In Generation on Fire, both well-known and overlooked political activists speak about their motives and actions during the 1960s through the present

In this book the author argues that 1965, not 1968, was the most transformative year of the 1960s, discussing attacks on civil rights demonstrators, increased African American militancy, the Watts riots, anti-war protests, and a growing national pessimism. At the beginning of 1965, the U.S. seemed on the cusp of a golden age. Although Americans had been shocked by the assassination in 1963 of President Kennedy, they exuded a sense of consensus and...