"One of the best short books we have on the ideas of racial equality" (George Bornstein, Times Literary Supplement). In this assessment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous 1963 speech, Eric J. Sundquist explores its origins, its place in the long history of American debates about equality and race, and why it is now hailed as the most powerful American address of the twentieth century. "The speech and all that surrounds it--background and consequences--are brought magnificently to life. ... Sundquist has written about race and ethnicity in American culture. In this book he gives us drama and emotion, a powerful sense of history combined with illuminating scholarship."--Anthony Lewis, New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice). "Each chapter of Sundquist's intelligent and important book focuses on one of several themes in the speech, unpacking the sources of the words and placing them within a broader civil rights context. His last chapter, 'Not by the Color of Their Skin,' is one of the most incisive analyses of the affirmative action debate I have ever read."--Clay Risen, Washington Post Book World. Eric J. Sundquist is UCLA Foundation Professor of Literature, UCLA. He is author or editor of eight books on American literature and culture, including the award-winning volumes To Wake the Nations and Strangers in the Land. Icons of America is a series of short works written by leading scholars, critics, and writers, each of whom tells a new and innovative story about American history and culture through the lens of a single iconic individual, event, object, or cultural phenomenon. A Caravan Book. For more information, visit www.caravanbooks.org Contains the full text of King's "I Have a Dream" speech Publication timed for the anniversary of the speech.
