Rosa Parks : A Life

Fifty years after she made history by refusing to give up her seat on a bus, Rosa Parks at last gets the major biography she deserves. The eminent historian Douglas Brinkley follows this thoughtful and devout woman from her childhood in Jim Crow Alabama through her early involvement in the NAACP to her epochal moment of courage and her afterlife as a beloved (and resented) icon of the civil rights movement. Well researched and written with sympathy and keen insight, the result is a moving, revelatory portrait of an American heroine and her tumultuous times.

Douglas Brinkley is Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. His books include Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War and The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter-'s Journey Beyond the White House.