(LEARNIN') Black History Month starts today, and there're five months of rain ahead. It's a propitious time to wade into Taylor Branch's
Pulitzer Prize–winning three-volume history of the civil rights movement. In volume one,
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, Branch revives the personalities that turned a municipal transportation
kerfuffle into one of history's
most successful protest movements. (
Your place, free from Seattle Public Library.) SETH KOLLOE