Speech The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream (60th Anniversary Edition)
Product details
Biographical note
Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in England. Formerly a columnist at The Guardian he is an editorial board member of The Nation magazine and the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media Center. He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives, The Speech: The Story Behind Martin Luther King’s Dream, Who Are We?: And Should it Matter in the 21st Century, Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels in the Disunited States, and No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South. He has also written for The New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ, The Financial Times, and The New Statesman, and made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit. He lives in London.
<p>“Slim but powerful…. Younge is adept at both distilling the facts and asking blunt questions.” <strong>—</strong><strong><em>Boston Globe<br />
</em></strong>“Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on [the speech's] significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes—the thought and preparation, vision and revision—whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history.” <strong>—Patricia J. Williams</strong></p>
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his powerful “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. Sixty years later, the speech endures as a defining moment in the civil rights movement and remains a beacon in the ongoing struggle for racial equality.
This gripping book tells the story behind “The Speech” and sheds light on other key moments of the March on Washington, drawing on interviews with Clarence Jones, a close friend of and draft speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr.; Joan Baez, who sang at the march; as well as Angela Davis and other leading civil rights luminaries.
Now with a new introduction to mark the 60th anniversary of that historic day in Washington, The Speech offers an essential analysis of King’s words at a moment of urgent reckoning and renewed calls for justice and liberation.
FEATURING A NEW INTRODUCTION: Originally published for the 50th anniversary, this new edition will feature a substantial new introduction addressing the significance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech for a new generation and in the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, Trump’s presidency, strides toward abolition, and new urgency around racial justice and liberation.
AUTHOR PROFILE: Since the publication of the first edition ten years ago, Gary Younge’s profile has only grown. He published Another Day in the Death of America to great acclaim in 2017; the book won the J. Anthony Lukas Prize, was shortlisted for the Orwell Book Prize, the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from the New York Public Library, and for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was longlisted for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Award. For his journalism, Younge has won the James Aaronson Career Achievement Award from Hunter College and the David Nyhan Prize for political journalism from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.
60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SPEECH: We expect numerous opportunities to promote Younge’s book around the anniversary, and will pitch Younge for op-eds and radio interviews.
Product details
Biographical note
Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in England. Formerly a columnist at The Guardian he is an editorial board member of The Nation magazine and the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media Center. He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives, The Speech: The Story Behind Martin Luther King’s Dream, Who Are We?: And Should it Matter in the 21st Century, Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels in the Disunited States, and No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South. He has also written for The New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ, The Financial Times, and The New Statesman, and made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit. He lives in London.