His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope (Unabridged)
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4.4 • 44 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful 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, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and 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.” From an early age, Lewis learned 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 Republic itself in the eighteenth century.” A believer in the injunction that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. In many ways he brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story offers inspiration and illumination for Americans today who are working for social and political change.
This audiobook includes a PDF of the book’s Appendix.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
From the front lines of the civil rights movement to the halls of Congress, the late John Lewis’ quest for justice was never-ending. Thanks to this inspiring biography by noted historian Jon Meacham, we understand why. Lewis was just a teenager when he first met Martin Luther King Jr. By college, he’d become a leading activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), playing a vital role in historic actions ranging from the Tennessee lunch counter sit-ins to the infamous Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama. Lewis even helped organize the 1963 March on Washington where MLK gave his indelible “I Have a Dream” speech. Throughout Meacham’s well-researched and heartfelt portrait, we learn how Lewis was not only a warrior for justice, but also a humble, kindhearted man. That kindness constantly guided his journey, even after he was elected to the House of Representatives. JD Jackson’s narration brings a distinctive personality not only to Lewis, but also to those around him, including MLK himself. Hearing about how this man persevered against hatred and tyranny was inspiring and gave us hope for the future.
