Hubert Humphrey: the idealistic firebrand who electrified the 1948 Democratic convention and relentlessly championed civil rights for more than twenty years. Lyndon Johnson: the wily, pragmatic Senate majority leader who resisted calls for civil rights but eventually, as president, became the driving force behind the monumental 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. And Richard Russell: the passionate conservative senator from Georgia who vainly defended a dying segregationist way of life.

Their personal and political lives strangely and inextricably intertwined, these three stood at the center of the storm during the legislative battles to establish American civil and voting rights.

Drawing on rich archival materials and on interviews with participants and witnesses, Robert Mann has written an unforgettable account of the intrigue, the compromises, the friendships, and the rivalries of these three powerful men and their complex relationships with other members of the Senate, including Everett Dirksen, Paul Douglas, John F. Kennedy, Albert Gore Sr., John Stennis, and James O. Eastland.

It is a classically American story about the perseverance, eloquence, duplicity, and genius of different men in pursuit of different goals - and the battered triumph of tolerance, fairness, and justice.