New book explores landmark moments in the civil rights movement. — Bettmann/Corbis

Taylor Branch is one of the country's preeminent authorities on American history during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, the first book of Branch's King Years trilogy, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. His latest work, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, looks once again at that tumultuous time period, identifying and analyzing 18 landmark moments of the struggle. Branch joins AARP Radio host Mike Cuthbert to talk about some of the most important events in King's life and in the civil rights movement as a whole.