Taylor Branch

Taylor Branch is an American author and public speaker best known for his landmark narrative history of the civil rights era, America in the King Years. The trilogy’s first book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, won the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards in 1989. Two successive volumes also gained critical and popular success: Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65, and At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968. Decades later, all three books remain in demand. Some reviewers have compared the King-era trilogy, which required more than twenty-four years of intensive research, with epic histories such as Shelby Foote’s The Civil War and Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson.

Branch returned to civil rights history in his latest book, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement (2013). It presents eighteen key episodes across the full span of the era, selected and knitted together in language from the trilogy, with new introductions for each of the chapters. The result is a compact, 190-page immersion for readers in this transformative period of American history. Beginning in the spring semester of 2013, Branch will offer from the University of Baltimore an on-line seminar built around The King Years and other texts.

In 2009, Simon and Schuster published The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President. Far more personal than Branch’s previous books, this memoir tells of an unprecedented eight-year project to gather a sitting president’s comprehensive oral history on tape. The collaboration is a story in itself, born of mutual concern over the declining quality of raw material for presidential history. At the initiative of President Bill Clinton, Branch suspended work on the King books about once a month to meet secretly in the White House residence, nearly always late at night. They recorded candid observations for posterity. The book reveals a president up close and unguarded, perceived by an author struggling to balance many roles.

In the October 2011 issue of The Atlantic,Branch published an influential cover story entitled “The Shame of College Sports,” which author and NPR commentator Frank Deford said “may well be the most important article ever written about college sports.” The article touched off continuing national debate. Byliner.com, a pioneer e-book publisher, issued an expanded version of the article as a digital book and on-demand paperback, The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA.Â

Aside from writing, Taylor Branch speaks before a variety of audiences—colleges, high schools, churches, synagogues, mosques, political and professional groups. He has discussed doctrines of nonviolence with prisoners at San Quentin as well as officers at the National War College. He has presented seminars on civil rights at Oxford University and in sixth-grade classrooms. His 2008 address at the National Cathedral marked the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s last Sunday sermon from that pulpit. In 2009, he gave the Theodore H. White Lecture on the Press and Politics at Harvard.

His musical sidelights have spanned the Atlanta Boy Choir in the 1950s, a high-school folk trio, and a contemporary octet for spirituals. In 2006, he and two friends reconstituted their 1960s college band as the cover group Off Our Rocker, which has recorded and released two CDs in playful tribute to the Beatles.

Sample of book reviews, lectures, media appearances, blogs, printed commentary, and musical tracks are available on the website, www.taylorbranch.com.

Branch began his career in 1970 as a staff journalist for The Washington Monthly, Harper’s, and Esquire. He holds honorary doctoral degrees from ten colleges and universities. Other citations include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 and the National Humanities Medal in 1999.

Books

The King Years:Â Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement
(Simon & Schuster, 2013)

The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA
(Byliner.com Original E-Book, 2011)

The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President
(Simon & Schuster, 2009)

At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68
(Simon & Schuster, 2006)

Winner: Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Non-Fiction, 2006
Distinguished Honors: Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, 2007
Winner: Search For Common Ground Book Award, 2007
Finalist: National Book Award, History, 2006
Finalist: National Book Critics Circle Award, Biography, 2006
Finalist: J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, 2007

Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 (1998)

Winner: American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, 1999
Winner: Sidney Hillman Book Award, 1999
Winner: Imus Book Award

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (1988)

Winner: Pulitzer Prize for History, 1988
Winner: National Book Critics Circle Award, 1988
Winner: Los Angeles Times Book Award, 1988
Winner: Melcher Book Award, 1988
Winner: English-Speaking Union Book Award, 1989
Winner: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 1989
Finalist: National Book Award, Non-Fiction, 1989

Labyrinth (With Eugene M. Propper) (Viking: 1982)

The Empire Blues (fiction) (Simon & Schuster: 1981)

Second Wind (With Bill Russell) (Random House: 1979)

Blind Ambition (ghostwriter for John Dean) (Simon & Schuster: 1976)

Blowing the Whistle: Dissent in the Public Interest (With Charles Peters) (Praeger: 1972)

Honors

John S. Guggenheim Fellowship, 1983
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, 1991
National Humanities Medal, 1999
Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, Lifetime Achievement, 2007
Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Lifetime Achievement, 2008
Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, 2015
U.S. National Archives Records of Achievement Award, 2015
Biographers International Organization BIO Award, 2015

Education

A.B., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1968
M.P.A., Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, 1970
Lecturer in Politics and History, Goucher College, 1998-2000

Background

Born January 14, 1947 in Atlanta, Georgia. Lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife Christina Macy. Their two children: Macy (b. 1980) and Franklin (b. 1983).