In honor of the date, and in hope of a wide-ranging discussion of books, I cannot possibly recommend highly enough "Parting the Waters" by Taylor Branch. The third and last volume of his biography of Martin Luther King -- more accurately described as history with a central character who flitters in and out -- is just published. It will have to be awfully good to surpass the first installment, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Branch makes history live and breathe. It is not a hagiography. The picture that emerges of MLK is of a flawed man, contradicted, ambivalent about his own role, and who was nonetheless among the greatest Americans of the 20th century. (That is my opinion; read the book(s) and decide for yourself, having a better basis to do so).

That volume is in one of many book boxes in the basement, so this is from recall, but there are two passages from "Parting the Waters" that remain fresh in my memory. One is a scene fairly early in the book, when King was a young preacher in Atlanta. He gave a sermon which concluded: "We will not submit to the iron boot heel of oppression." Branch describes the response of the congregation as growing, growing, growing, until finally it was a great roar; King had successfully melded the cadences and concerns of Southern gospel and civil rights. The end of that passage in the book, which I wish I could claim are the exact words -- this is from memory -- is "From that day forward he would be a public figure, both admired and reviled. He was 26 years old. He had not quite 12 years and 9 months to live."

The other passage I remember is at the very end of the book. I do not remember it exactly; please read the original. This is history in a vivid sense, very far from the "Eat your peas" sense of our schooling. Branch closes by saying that "race is the issue that would raise King up to move among rulers and down to die among garbage workers in Memphis. To keep going, he became a pillar of fire." (The title of the second volume, and a writerly tic Branch would echo at the end of the next book).