Parting the Waters

America in the King Years, 1954-63

By: Taylor Branch

Narrated by: Joe Morton, CCH Pounder

Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

This audio adaptation focuses primarily on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the key moments that defined his rise to the forefront of the civil rights movement. From Rosa Parks' monumental arrest in Montgomery to King's imprisonment in Birmingham and his triumphant march on Washington, Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness. He illuminates the stunning courage and private conflict, the deals, maneuvers, betrayals, and rivalries that determined history behind closed doors, at boycotts and sit-ins, on bloody freedom rides, and through siege and murder.

Parting the Waters is the first volume in Taylor Branch's three-volume history, America in the King Years. Don't miss Pillar of Fire or At Canaan's Edge.

©1998 Taylor Branch, All Rights Reserved (P)1998 Simon & Schuster Inc., All Rights Reserved, AUDIOWORKS is an Imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster Inc.

Critic reviews

• Pulitzer Prize Winner, 1989, History

Disappointing Abridgment

I was expecting to follow the hard copy of the book verbatim. But much is missing. However, being able to listen is still informative.

Warning Abridged

Would you try another book from Taylor Branch and/or Joe Morton and CCH Pounder ?

Yes

What could Taylor Branch have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Write Abridged in the Title of the Audiobook

Any additional comments?

Warning this audiobook is not the complete book

Amazing book and life. Poor abridging.

Where is the full book? Arghgh. I only listened to this abridged version because there is no unabridged version.

Beware Abridged Version

Had I known this was the abridged audio version of the book I would not have purchased it. Disappointed and unsatisfied.

Badly/horribly abridged

Read the book and loved it; one of my alltime favorites. The abridged audio version, however, robbed this extraordinary story of much of what made the book great. The written book's power, in part, comes from Branch's movement between different levels of narrative, as he weaves details of MLK's life and the stories that surround him into the larger historical narrative that we think we all know. In the abridged audio version, the complexity and texture of many of those details are gone. Most egregiously, gone is the entire 240 page section from the start of the Montgomery bus boycott until 1962, including the relationship between the Eisenhower administration and civil rights and MLK, MLK's movement into the national spotlight, most of the background about the civil rights movement before MLK, Dubois, the NAACP, the momentous JFK call to Coretta Scott King when MLK was in jail and the start of the sit-in movement. Even the story of Rosa Parks is given short shrift.

Gone as well are the personal and social struggles involving nonviolence (James Lawson disappears, MLK loses his personal and theologic struggles over issues of justice and much of his reading of Niebuhr) and a myriad of details about MLK's early life (no church choir singing controversially at the debut of 'Gone With the Wind'), the role of Gandhism and church politics. The Rockefeller role in funding Spellman and Morehouse colleges is gone.

The effect is to make it seem that MLK's story only gets interesting when he becomes a player in J. Edgar Hoover's and JFK's and RFK's world of interagency rivalry and high politics. The written book made it clear that the world of Washington DC was only one of many settings in which meaning was made and, in fact, played the many levels of action off against each other beautifully. That beauty is gone from the abridged audiobook, as is the depth of historical understanding that the written book provided. Not worth my money.

Great book badly abridged

Would you consider the audio edition of Parting the Waters to be better than the print version?

This abridged version contains too little of the full book. The print version is admittedly a big book but it's not flabby. Too much meat was cut to fit this way-too-short audiobook. The short length not only omits critical and interesting information, it distortingly rushes the reader's perception of the history that played out across this decade from '54 to '63. A lot more fascinating things happened than you'd realize from hearing this version. Branch masterfully researched and wrote about them. You wouldn't know it from this audiobook.

Engaging

I am a history buff and did enjoy the book, at least enough to want to hear the rest in the series. Was worth the time.