Overview

No two public figures were more crucial in the drama of race relations in the 1960s than Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. Fifty years after they were both murdered, noted journalist David Margolick explores the untold story of the complex and ever-evolving relationship between these two American icons. Assassinated only sixty-two days apart in 1968, King and Kennedy changed the United States forever, and their deaths profoundly altered the country's trajectory. The Promise and the Dream offers a compelling look at one of the most consequential but misunderstood relationships in our nation's history.

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9781948122269

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Reviews

I knew Martin Luther King like a brother, and David Margolick captures the cautious mutual admiration that existed between him and Robert Kennedy. Margolick has developed a portrait of two leaders cut down before the prime of life, and suggests what they might have done, separately or together, had they each lived twenty years longer. --Ambassador Andrew Young A vivid, vibrant, deeply thoughtful and well-informed reflection on the 1960s' two most fascinating public figures. --David J. Garrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross and Rising Star Five decades may have passed, but in the adept hands of David Margolick the 1960s and two of its most compelling figures and are made vivid, immediate, and most of all inspiring. King and Kennedy were giants; Margolick traces the braided arcs of their lives and the confluence of their deaths with the narrative power and literary grace they both deserve. --Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition and former public editor of The New York Times. What might Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy have achieved together? David Margolick's prodigious research and narrative power gives us a haunting and original insight into the eight-year dance between the dreamer and the doubter. We relive the mental and spiritual anguish of the last two great years of King's life and Bobby Kennedy's valorous efforts to realize the deep poetic vision his critics never could see in the ruthless brat of an Attorney General. --Harold Evans, author of The American Century Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were the perhaps the last American heroes. Now, for the first time, David Margolick tells the surprising, moving and gripping story of their intertwined lives - their conflicts, mutual suspicion, quiet reciprocal support, and shared vision of an America free of racial prejudice. Margolick's fresh research, lapidary prose, and keen appreciation of these men's importance all make this book a must read, especially in our own political dark times. --David Greenberg, Professor of History, Rutgers University, author, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency

Author Information

David Margolick is a long-time contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Prior to that, for fifteen years he was a legal affairs reporter at the New York Times, where he covered the trials of O.J. Simpson and Lorena Bobbitt, among others, and wrote the weekly At the Bar column. His work there was nominated four times for the Pulitzer Prize. He has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and the Wall Street Journal's weekly Review section. He is the author of many books, including Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns; Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock; Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink; and Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. He lives in New York City.

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