Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Idea Whose Time Has Come

Idea Whose Time Has Come

Purdum, Todd S.

Paperback

20th Century United States HistoryGeneral Political ScienceSocial Movements

Publisher Price: $28.99

ISBN10: 1250062462
ISBN13: 9781250062468
Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
Published: Mar 31 2015
Pages: 432
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.10
Language: English

A top Washington journalist recounts the dramatic political battle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that created modern America

It was a turbulent time in America--a time of sit-ins, freedom rides, a March on Washington and a governor standing in the schoolhouse door--when John F. Kennedy sent Congress a bill to bar racial discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations. Countless civil rights measures had died on Capitol Hill in the past. But this one was different because, as one influential senator put it, it was an idea whose time has come.

In a powerful narrative layered with revealing detail, Todd S. Purdum tells the story of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, recreating the legislative maneuvering and the larger-than-life characters who made its passage possible. From the Kennedy brothers to Lyndon Johnson, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen, Purdum shows how these all-too-human figures managed, in just over a year, to create a bill that prompted the longest filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate yet was ultimately adopted with overwhelming bipartisan support. He evokes the high purpose and low dealings that marked the creation of this monumental law, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of new interviews that bring to life this signal achievement in American history.

Often hailed as the most important law of the past century, the Civil Rights Act stands as a lesson for our own troubled times about what is possible when patience, bipartisanship, and decency rule the day.

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