Description

This program is read by multipleawardwinning narrator JD Jackson

1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E Ricks offers a new take on the civil rights movement stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world

In Waging a Good War bestselling author Thomas E Ricks offers a fresh perspective on Americas greatest moral revolutionthe civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960sand its legacy today While the movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King Jrs ethos of nonviolence Ricks a Pulitzer Prizewinning war reporter draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to note the surprising affinities between that ethos and the organized pursuit of success at war The greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century he stresses were won not by idealism alone but by paying attention to recruiting training discipline and organizationthe hallmarks of any successful military campaign

An engaging storyteller Ricks deftly narrates the movements triumphs and defeats He follows King and other key figures from Montgomery to Memphis demonstrating that Gandhian nonviolence was a philosophy of active not passive resistance involving the bold and sustained confrontation of the Movements adversaries both on the ground and in the court of public opinion While bringing legends such as Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis into new focus Ricks also highlights lesserknown figures who played critical roles in fashioning nonviolence into an effective toolthe activists James Lawson James Bevel Diane Nash and Septima Clark foremost among them He also offers a new understanding of the Movements later difficulties as internal disputes and white backlash intensified Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of Americas civil rights struggle Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social changeand one that offers vital lessons for our own time

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar Straus and Giroux