Home › Books › His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Powe…
His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope
by
17/99
Critics' Rating Index
98/99
Readers' Rating Index
84/99
Scholars' Citation Index
77/99
Volume of Reviews
88/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
An intimate and inspiring portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis and deep research into the history of the civil rights movement, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and a son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." A believer in hope above all else, Lewis learned from a young age that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his family's chickens. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it--his first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. Integral to Lewis's commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God--and an unshakable belief in the power of hope. Meacham calls Lewis "as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the nation-state in the eighteenth century. He did what he did--risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful--not in spite of America, but because of America, and not in spite of religion, but because of religion." In many ways Lewis made his vision a reality, and his example offers Americans today a map for social and political change.
Reviews
"Meacham's account is loving and instructive."
"Meacham makes a persuasive case for his claim that 'John Robert Lewis embodied the traits of a saint in the classical Christian sense of the term.' At a moment when events have once again forced Americans to confront the evils of racism, His Truth Is Marching On will inspire both courage and hope."
"in favor of SNCC, he allows less famous activists to come to the fore ..."
"A profile in courage and faith under fire emerges from this vivid portrait of Georgia congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis ..."
"Refreshingly, Meacham offers a distinctly human portrait of a man who struggled with anxieties, fears, and occasionally despair, a leader who dug deep to find the courage to keep going in the face of nearly insurmountable cultural resistance."
"Here's the problem with reducing Lewis' life to his time in the movement: It turns the movement into the John Lewis story."
"The most interesting parts of Meacham's book are his observations about how Lewis' activism was inspired by his Christian faith ..."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!