David Garrow has an essay review, "The Obscure Heroes Behind Congress’s Great Moment" at The American Prospect. He discusses Clay Risen’s The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act and Todd Purdum’s An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Garrow begins:
On Tuesday July 2, 1963, Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall caught an early morning flight to Dayton, Ohio. Six days before, Marshall’s boss, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, had appeared before a House Judiciary Subcommittee to present the newly introduced civil-rights bill that his brother, President John F. Kennedy, had committed himself to enacting during a powerful nationwide television address on June 11.
Read the rest here.