Taylor Branch has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 16 ratings. The most-rated is Parting the Waters.

5 audiobooks
Cover art for Parting the Waters

Parting the Waters

4 ratings

Summary

In Parting the Waters, the first volume of his essential America in the King Years series, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch gives a “compelling...masterfully told” (The Wall Street Journal) account of Martin Luther King’s early years and rise to greatness.  Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations. Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War. Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness and illuminates the stunning courage and private conflict, the deals, maneuvers, betrayals, and rivalries that determined history behind closed doors, at boycotts and sit-ins, on bloody freedom rides, and through siege and murder. Epic in scope and impact, Branch's chronicle definitively captures one of the nation's most crucial passages. 

©2019 Taylor Branch (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: 45 hrs and 10 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Pillar of Fire

Pillar of Fire

2 ratings

Summary

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on the American civil rights movement.

In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the civil rights movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage. 

©2007 Taylor Branch (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Parting the Waters

Parting the Waters

2 ratings

Summary

This audio adaptation focuses primarily on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the key moments that defined his rise to the forefront of the civil rights movement. From Rosa Parks' monumental arrest in Montgomery to King's imprisonment in Birmingham and his triumphant march on Washington, Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness. He illuminates the stunning courage and private conflict, the deals, maneuvers, betrayals, and rivalries that determined history behind closed doors, at boycotts and sit-ins, on bloody freedom rides, and through siege and murder.

©1998 Taylor Branch, All Rights Reserved (P)1998 Simon & Schuster Inc., All Rights Reserved, AUDIOWORKS is an Imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster Inc.

Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The King Years

The King Years

Summary

The essential moments of the civil rights movement are introduced and set in historical context by the author of the magisterial America in the King Years trilogy: Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge. Taylor Branch's three-volume history endures as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. With this brief volume, which brings to life the pivotal scenes, he relates the dramatic story of how the movement evolved from a bus strike to a political revolution, and brings this historic achievement to a wider audience.

©2013 Taylor Branch (P)2013 Simon & Schuster

Narrator: Leslie Odom Jr.
Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for At Canaan's Edge

At Canaan's Edge

Summary

At Canaan's Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and best-selling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history. In At Canaan's Edge, King and his movement stand at the zenith of America's defining story, one decade into an epic struggle for the promises of democracy. Branch opens with the authorities' violent suppression of a voting-rights march in Alabama on March 7, 1965. The quest to cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge engages the conscience of the world, strains the civil rights coalition, and embroils King in negotiations with all three branches of the U.S. government. The marches from Selma coincide with the first landing of large U.S. combat units in South Vietnam. The escalation of the war severs the cooperation of King and President Lyndon Johnson after a collaboration that culminated in the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. At Canaan's Edge portrays King at the height of his moral power even as his worldly power is waning. It shows why his fidelity to freedom and nonviolence makes him a defining figure long beyond his brilliant life and violent end.

©2006 Taylor Branch (P)2006 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Audioworks is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division.

Narrator: Joe Morton
Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
Available on Audible