基本信息·出版社：Wiley ·页码：312 页 ·出版日期：2009年01月 ·ISBN：0470177101 ·International Standard Book Number：0470177101 ·条形码：978 ...
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A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination |
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A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination |
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基本信息·出版社：Wiley
·页码：312 页
·出版日期：2009年01月
·ISBN：0470177101
·International Standard Book Number：0470177101
·条形码：9780470177105
·EAN：9780470177105
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语
内容简介 A few hours after Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at a Memphis motel, violent mobs had looted and burned several blocks of Washington a few miles north of the White House, centered around the U Street commercial district. Quick action by D.C. police quelled the violence, but shortly before noon the next day, looting and arson broke out anew -- not just along U Street, but in two other commercial districts as well.
Over the next several days, the immediate crisis of the riots was matched by an equally ominous sense among the nation's political leadership that they were watching the final dissolution of the 1960s liberal dream. For many whites who watched flames overtake city after city -- Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City -- the April riots were an unfathomable and deeply troubling response during what should have been a time of national mourning. To them the rioters were little better than common criminals. But a look at the average rioter complicates such conclusions: they were primarily young (under 25) and male, but most made a decent salary, had a better than average education, and had no previous arrest record. In interviews and testimonies afterward, rioters recalled a sense of release, of striking back at the "system."
To say that the riots meant different things to different people would be exceedingly trite if it weren't also exceedingly true. In ways large and small, the King riots solidified attitudes and trends that destroyed the momentum behind racial progress, fatally wounded postwar domestic liberalism, created new divisions among blacks and whites, and condemned urban America to decades of poverty and crime. This book will explain why they occurred, how they played out, and what they meant.
作者简介 Clay Risen, formerly an editor at the
New Republic, is the founding managing editor of
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He's also written for
Smithsonian,
Slate, the
Atlantic, and the
New York Times Sunday Magazine.
专业书评 From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Writer and editor Risen accounts for the lead-up to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, and the waves of violence that swept the nation in its wake. Risen's work is eye-opening, emphasizing cagey analysis as well as a recreation of the atmosphere and events following King's brutal slaying. Unquestionably important, Risen's detailed narrative documents each riot individually, offering both statistics and accounts from witnesses and participants in the rioting, looting, and arson. Risen also documents President Johnson's personal struggle to maintain order in a wounded country that increasingly disapproved of him, and speeches made by Robert Kennedy and Stokely Carmichael which are believed to have quelled (at least temporarily) the violence. Perhaps more important than his acute historical knowledge is Risen's perspective on the causes of each riot and the emotional toll they took on the American public, which he correlates directly to subsequent loss of support for the civil rights movement. Debut author Risen, formerly of The New Republic and currently founding manager of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, has crafted a crucial addition to civil rights history, sure to absorb anyone interested in the times, the movement or MLK Jr. 16 b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From the Back CoverA Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination "A solid and compassionate account of a week that proved a graveyard for the liberal dreams of the 1960s, and a seedbed for the backlash against them."
—Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland and Before the Storm
"A compelling, original history of the tumult that followed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Clay Risen's sobering account of the riots of April 1968 sheds new light on how the racial divisions of the late 1960s reconfigured liberal and conservative politics and transformed American urban life."
—Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
"Clay Risen's A Nation on Fire is the long-awaited, definitive account of one of the most important, underreported events of the 1960s. As important for its historical aspect as it is for understanding where we are today, it is an exciting, important document, excitingly told."
—George Pelecanos,author of The Turnaround and The Night Gardener
"America is still coming to terms with the legacy of the 1960s. A Nation on Fire powerfully demonstrates the impact of urban riots on the politics of race and democracy following Martin Luther King's assassination. With clarity and insight, Clay Risen chronicles the tumultuous week in 1968 that indelibly transformed American race relations."
—Peniel Joseph, author of Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
目录
Acknowledgments.
Prologue.
1 King, Johnson, and the Terrible, Glorious Thirty-first Day of March.
2 April 4: Before the Bullet.
3 April 4: The News Arrives.
4 April 4: U and Fourteenth.
5 April 5: Midnight Interlude.
6 April 5: “Any Man’s Death Diminishes Me”.
7 April 5: “Once That Line Has Been Crossed”.
8 April 5: “Official Disorder on Top of Civil Disorder”.
9 April 5: The Occupation of Washington.
10 April 5: “There Are No Ghettos in Chicago”.
11 April 6: Roadblocks.
12 April 6: An Eruption in Baltimore.
13 April 7: Palm Sunday.
14 April 8: Bluff City on Edge.
15 April 9: A Country Rent Asunder.
16 April 10 and 11: Two Speeches.
17 A Summer Postscript.
18 1969 and After.
Notes.
Index.
……
