Giving voice to history's heroes

Instead of a single "Pick-of-the-Month" for May, I want to recommend four outstanding presentations closely linked in theme, mood, and focus.

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

The first three form an audio triptych of extraordinary power, covering the ten-year period that saw the civil rights movement grow from its roots in southern black churches to take the national stage and confront the conscience of America. Taylor Branch won the Pulitzer Prize for Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, and he may well be due for an encore award with the second volume in this trilogy, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65. Branch brings fascinating detail to the story while capturing the larger historical context and significance of the events. King was a rare man for this century, perhaps for any, and his words, his unshakable belief in morality, nonviolence, and the elementary justice guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment had the strength to move the movement and, eventually, masses of Americans of every color. As you hear his words and relive the obstacles that had to be overcome -- seething racism, hardened resistance to integration, unchecked terrorism, Presidential indifference, vicious FBI interference -- his accomplishments take on their deservedly epic proportions. Joe Morton and C.C.H. Pounder take turns reading, offering eloquent narration that underscores the eloquence of the text.

Thirty eight years ago David Halberstam, then a young reporter for the Nashville Tennessean, covered the sit-ins by black college students that ended segregation at lunch counters in the Nashville business district. Now, in The Children, he returns to those dramatic days and follows several of the Nashville "sit-in kids" as they became leaders in the civil rights movement. Halberstam's meticulous reportage complements Branch's in offering a clear perspective on the events and people whose enduring courage moved America towards a more perfect union. Joe Morton is narrator here again, his calm intensity emphasizing the interrelated force of these three audios.


The fourth part of the "Pick" -- King's voice itself

A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran offers a unique experience -- Dr. King's own words as he spoke them from the pulpits of the Ebenezer Baptist Church and many others. These 11 sermons, each introduced by a noted churchman -- Reverend Billy Graham and Archbishop Desmond Tutu among them -- range from King's first recorded sermon in 1954 to his last in 1968. They ring with the power, conviction, and timelessness that marks Dr. King's oratory. King said, "Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the gospel. This was my first calling, and it remains my greatest commitment." This collection is a testament not only to the truth of that statement, but to Dr. King's profound and prophetic leadership against oppression, and to his resolute faith.

    A Knock at Midnight:
    Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
    Edited by Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran
    Time Warner AudioBooks, $26.98
    6 cassettes
    ISBN 1570425728

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Long on shorts

We're long on shorts this month -- short stories that is -- all remarkable in their different ways. Listening to Grace Paley read her own short stories in Selected Stories is very special, and to have six hours of her rough-edged, New York-toughened, oddly tender voice is a true delight. Even more of a delight are the stories, a genre unto themselves, taken from her three collections, The Little Disturbances of Man, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, and Later the Same Day. Paley, whose humor glows even in the gloom, grows with her characters, or maybe it's the other way around; you don't feel that she's observing, rather that she's in the heart and soul of the men and women she's created. If their world seems alien and eccentric, the geography of their emotions soon becomes understandable, appealing, cosmically credible.


Best-selling Irish novelist Maeve Binchy is no stranger to the shorter forms of fiction. The Return Journey, her latest collection of stories, presented in its entirety here, showcases her tale-telling talent. Set in Ireland and England, on shipboard in between the two and on longer voyages, they are peopled with characters she knows well. Here Binchy does what she does best, making the commonplace uncommon, finding poignance, irony, and humor in everyday situations. Fionnula Flanagan, who has recorded three Maeve Binchy novels, performs here with and without brogue and with flawless flair.


Let's hope that The Last Best Hope is not the last we hear from Ed McBain or Matthew Hope, the very likable, very human hero of the best-selling Matthew Hope mystery series. Matthew, still reeling from his last encounter with bad guys and guns, gets unwittingly embroiled in a messy case of multiple double-crossing, duplicity, deceit, and a rising body count. McBain throws in a little kinky sex, some gorgeous, no-good broads, the priceless (well, of course there is a price or why would anyone want to steal it) clay vessel that Socrates drank the hemlock from, Matthew's current squeeze, and his ever-present ex-wife, Susan. McBain reads his stuff, and, as always, it is good stuff indeed.


The Daddy Clock, Judy Markey's debut novel, is a real charmer. If you thought that biological clocks tick only for the female of the species, think again. Charlie Feldman, a 44-year-old, unattached, newspaper sportswriter, wants a baby and wants one real bad. But he's at a distinct disadvantage. Charlie needs a wife and a life, and to that end enlists the aid of Lacy, an assistant on the paper's advice column and a 30-something single mother who is adamantly against an encore in that department. They're pals, nothing more, until . . . Then, the plot twists away from the predictable. David Colacci and Susan Ericksen read alternating chapters.


Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month. Don't miss her audio reviews on CNN's Sunday Morning.

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