He did this through images packed with startling details, vivid tableaus, symbols and information that were often expanded on by eccentric, theme-matched frames made of things like branches, books and pill bottles.
Simon recounted how a section of Branch's book had challenged him recently as he debated the unrest in Baltimore.
The two parties "didn't have fundamental principles back then," said Norman Ornstein, co-author of "The Broken Branch," a book on Congressional dysfunction.
Seattle's entire library system — from its branches to book drops to Web site — is shut down this week to save money.
In the course of Branch's book, the agonizing in the Oval Office, as the President alternately rails at and pleads with his advisers about the unwinnable Vietnam dilemma, starts to seem more farcical than tragic.
It is still our root and branch, a book of magical realism in whose shadow we still dwell.
Simon introduced his team, explaining how they had found their way through the thousands of pages of history in Branch's books, eventually focussing the miniseries on the third volume, "At Canaan's Edge," which covers the period from 1965 to 1968, when King turned the civil-rights movement toward economic equality.
Brian Bannon: We recently surveyed 30,000 people and 95percentt of respondents said they had used their branch for books in the last year, and one in every four patrons have used the Library for programs.
They're branching out into books now, which they're billing as "The Nation's First Online Summer Bookswap," and it's giving books away boiled down complete practicality.
The deal would hardly have been a blockbuster: BHF, with 2,600 employees, 15 branches and a book value of 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion), would have been an easy lunch for Commerzbank, Germany's fourth-largest commercial bank.
