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"During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president--the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate--but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium. Defying Truman's own desire to occupy the middle ground, Humphrey urged the delegates to ""get out of the shadow of state's rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights."" Humphrey's speech put everything on the line, rhetorically and politically, to move the party, and the country, forward. To the surprise of many, including Humphrey himself, the delegates voted to adopt a meaningful civil-rights plank. With no choice but to run on it, Truman seized the opportunity it offered, desegregating the armed forces and in November upsetting the frontrunner Thomas Dewey, a victory due in part to an unprecedented surge of Black voters. The outcome of that week in July 1948--which marks its seventy-fifth anniversary as this book is published--shapes American politics to this day."

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"Samuel G. Freedman is an award-winning professor, columnist, and author of nine acclaimed books. Freedman was a staff reporter for the New York Times from 1981 through 1987. From 2004 through 2008, he wrote the paper's ""On Education"" column, winning first prize in the Education Writers Association's annual competition in 2005. From 2006 through 2016, Freedman wrote the ""On Religion"" column, receiving the Goldziher Prize for Journalists in 2017 for a series of columns about Muslim-Americans that had been published over the preceding six years. As a professor of journalism at Columbia University, Freedman has been named the nation's outstanding journalism educator by the Society of Professional Journalists and received Columbia's coveted Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. Mike Lenz has been an audiobook narrator and voice actor for more than fourteen years. Having narrated titles in genres ranging from fiction, entertainment, science, and children's literature to Christian, business, self-help, and history, Mike loves bringing nonfiction and fiction stories to life with his engaging, confident, and trustworthy voice. Mike's broad background includes voicing commercials, eLearning projects, real estate videos, corporate and web-based videos, and brand imaging, appearing in regional and national television commercials as an on-camera talent, and serving as the mayor of his hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York. Mike is also a Voice Arts Award-nominated podcast producer as well as an author. He is a frequent speaker at learning and voice-over conferences. Mike currently lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife and four children."

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