At Canaan's Edge

You know a book's release is a big deal when the Times gives Michiko Kakutani the assignment to review it. Kakutani might well be the most respected reviewer in America. Well, Kakutani has reviewed the third and final installment of Taylor Branch's epic treatment of Martin Luther King Jr's life and times, At Canaan's Edge in this week's Book Review. I hate to be provincial, or proprietary, but revered as Kakutani is, were there no historians available? A book this significant (and that is going to sell zillions irrespective of its reviews) deserves to be taken seriously by those who most know about the topic. There are dozens and dozens of good historians of the movement who could have tackled this landmark book. It strikes me as being dissonant that Kakutani gets the call. Yes, the release of this book is surely an event. But inadvertantly, the Times has made it MERELY an event, rather than using this opportunity to engage those who best know this material and can assess its significance. I'd be willing to bet that, had the Times come calling, David Garrow, Clayborne Carson, John Dittmer, Charles Payne, Adam Fairclough, Tony Badger, Mills Thornton, Ray Arsenault, Steven Lawson, Darlene Clark Hine, Kari Frederickson, Patricia Sullivan, Dan Carter, David Chappell, John Hope Franklin, George Frederickson, Jane Dailey, and a dozen other similarly situated historians would have listened.