Waging a Good War: How the Civil Rights Movement Won Its Battles, 1954–1968

Leadership | 

Book Review: Waging a Good War: How the Civil Rights Movement Won Its Battles, 1954–1968

Author: Keith Nightingale

| Reviewed by Keith Nightingale, retired colonel, US Army | 

Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks frames the American civil rights movement in terms of a (nonviolent) war, examining the leadership, strategy, and tactics required for success. Ricks also discusses the postwar-like effects the movement had on its participants (such as PTSD), which reviewer Colonel Keith Nightingale (US Army, retired) calls "the most poignant matter in the book." Nightingale also praises the work as "a highly readable dissection of the movement" and "a history of the first order."

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Keywords: civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., leadership, tactics, American society