Books

Martin Luther King, in the words of historian Garry Wills, "rallied the strength of broken men … In helping them, he exercised real power, achieved changes that dwarf the moon shot as an American achievement. The 'Kennedy era' was really the age of Dr. King."

Coinciding with what would have been King's 77th birthday—he was younger than either Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush—is At Canaan's Edge (Simon & Schuster), Taylor Branch's final volume of the modern civil rights movement. In the manner of his Bearing the Cross (which won a Pulitzer) and Pillar of Fire, Branch studies the last three years of King's life from 1965 through 1968. Though King still commanded public authority in an increasingly conservative America, Branch examines how King was losing stature within the civil rights community to the nascent Black Power movement, and how King began to link civil rights to poverty and, eventually, the Vietnam War. With America "destroying hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese children with napalm, leaving broken bodies in countless fields and sending home half-men, mutilated mentally and physically," King told a Los Angeles audience in 1967, "I tremble for our world … I speak out against this war because I am disappointed in America. There can be no great disappointment where there is no great love."

"At their best, like the Founders, allies of the nonviolent movement will turn rulers and subjects into fellow citizens," Branch writes in At Canaan's Edge. "Literally and figuratively, they still change the face of the country we inherit." He'll be at the Free Library to discuss King's movement and its relevance four decades later.

Taylor Branch, Tue., Jan. 24, 8 p.m., $6-$12, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322.