David Greenberg has produced a biography of "Conscience of the Congress" civil rights leader and activist John Lewis worthy of your time in John Lewis: A Life (#1,314). Rising from a poor rural Alabama farm family through multiple arrests and beatings to a seat in Congress, where at the end of a long and fruitful life, he lay in state in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, this book covers it all. I came away even more impressed with the man after I read it.
That is not to say that this is a hagiography; far from it. Greenberg captures his foibles and fumbles as well as the highlights. What he has done is humanize John Lewis and reveal some of the struggles in both his professional and personal life.
Some of the events covered in Greenberg's book occurred before I was old enough to remember, but many of them I can vividly recall. Coming across two people in these pages whom I met and spoke with makes me realize my own life is passing into history. It's rather daunting. It's also excruciating to realize that many of the gains John Lewis and his co-activists worked so hard to achieve are being hacked away in the Washington, D.C. government of today. Now that's food for thought!
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