Taylor Branch

Taylor Branch (born January 14, 1947 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an American author and historian best known for his award-winning trilogy of books chronicling the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the history of the American civil rights movement. The third and final volume of the 2,912-page trilogy — collectively called America in the King Years — was released in January 2006. Branch lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife, Christina Macy, and their two children, Macy (b.1980) and Franklin (b. 1983)

Early life and education

Branch graduated from The Westminster Schools in Atlanta in 1964. From there, he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead Scholarship. He graduated in 1968 and went on to earn an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1970. He was a lecturer in politics and history at Goucher College from 1998 to 2000.

Career

Branch served as an assistant editor at The Washington Monthly from 1970 to 1973; he was Washington editor of Harper's from 1973 to 1976; and he was Washington columnist for Esquire Magazine from 1976 to 1977. He also has written for a wide variety of other publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Sport, The New Republic, and Texas Monthly. In 1972, Branch helped run the Texas campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern. Branch's co-leaders in the effort were Bill Clinton, later to be president of the United States, and Houston lawyer Julius Glickman. He received a five-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (also known as a "genius grant") in 1991 and the National Humanities Medal in 1999.

Books

• Blowing the Whistle: Dissent in the Public Interest (with Charles Peters) (Praeger: 1972)
• Blind Ambition (ghostwriter for John Dean) (Simon & Schuster: 1976)¹
• Second Wind (with Bill Russell) (Random House: 1979)
• The Empire Blues (fiction) (Simon & Schuster: 1981
• Labyrinth (with Eugene M. Propper): (Viking: 1982)
• Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (Simon & Schuster: 1988)

Pulitzer Prize for History, 1988

National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction, 1988

English-Speaking Union Book Award, 1989

(Finalist): National Book Award, Non-Fiction, 1989

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

American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, 1999)

Imus Book Award, 1999

Sidney Hillman Book Award, 1999

• At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (Simon & Schuster: 2006)

Notes

• Note 1: Dean denies that Branch served as his ghostwriter. Dean, John Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet: Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More, Findlaw, September 9, 2005.

External links

• http://www.taylorbranch.com/
• http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/htm/05047.html Inventory of the Taylor Branch Papers at the Southern Historical Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill.