Mr. Branch talked about his new book, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65, published by Simon and Schuster. This is the second in a three-volume work on the civil rights movement. The book examines the zenith of the movement with the passage of the Civil Rights Act as well as rising divisions and attacks against it as the Reverenc Martin Luther King, Jr., struggled to hold the nonviolent movement together. Mr. Branch conducted fifteen years of research involving archival investigation, nearly two thousand interviews, and primary sources including Federal Bureau of Investigation wiretaps and White House telephone recordings. He also talked about his reasons for writing on the topic and his research and writing process.