April 4, 1968

Short Review: This is a scattered book that is on the legacy of King's death more than King himself. There are three interesting mini-biographies of Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton and Barak Obama. And imagined interview with MLK Jr on his 80th birthday and a lot more.

There is some really good content, but scattered and not well integrated. This is the third book of Dyson's that I have read this year. The first two The Black Presidency and Tears We Cannot Stop were excellent. This was just okay.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/april-4-1968/

I was disappointed that this wasn't more focused on Martin Luther King Jr. I expected there to be talk about the repercussions of his assassination and the Civil Rights movement as a whole but was surprised the parts about MLK just skimmed the surface. I learned a couple of new things about him though not to any great extent. Given the length of the book, I didn't anticipate this to be a deep account of anything, but there was a lot of content supplied and the brevity made so many things get lost in the jumble. At the same time, there were many repetitive passages. I tried to take it for what it was, but the speculation of the epilogue lost me. I don't like that kind of narrative in history books. I prefer the facts.