Pillar of Fire – Reviews
“As he did in Parting the Waters, Branch brings to these events both a passion for their detail and a recognition of their larger historical significance. By giving King such epic treatment, Branch implies that he was an epic hero. Was he? The great merit of Branch's stunning accomplishment is to prove definitively that he was.”
– Alan Wolfe, The New York Times Book Review
“Pillar of Fire is a magisterial history of one of the most tumultuous periods in postwar America. Branch's storytelling is strong, his storytelling colorful. Reading Branch, it is easier to see why even the most remarkable revolutions are never complete. ”
– Jon Meacham, Newsweek
“...a powerful, surprising argument, never explicitly stated but implicitly clear, holding that the rebellions against the established order--which took their form in the civil-rights movement, the youth movement, the early stirrings of the women's movement and the middle class's changing self-definition through the 1960s--were inextricably linked.... It is Mr. Branch's achievement to display how the civil-rights pressures and the Cold War pressures were intertwined.”
– David M. Shribman, The Wall Street Journal
“Following Parting the Waters, his magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Civil Rights years 1954-63, Branch's second volume of a projected trilogy takes the story through the heady years that saw the Southern Freedom Rides, Congressional battles over the Civil Rights acts, the March on Washington, the Birmingham bombing, and the assassinations of John Kennedy, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X. Once more, Branch's national epic is knit together by the charismatic figure of Dr. King. We only think we know this story, which in Branch's masterly version seems freshened and newly impressive, told without cant or cliche.”
– Library Journal
“By the time you have finished [Pillar of Fire], you feel almost as if you have relieved the era, not just read about it.”
– Richard Bernstein, The New York Times