Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968

Incongruity rests at the core of Thomas E. Ricks’s novel and provocative book … Ricks’s book contains several estimable features. The novel military framing, for example, allows Ricks to offer engaging reappraisals of some civil rights figures … Moreover, rather than viewing the conflict as existing only between segregationists and integrationists, Ricks wisely and consistently highlights the critical tensions and cleavages that existed within the civil rights movement itself. Far too many examinations of this history gloss over such conflicts … To his great credit, Ricks does not refrain from criticism of even the most esteemed civil rights figures when he believes that their strategic and tactical decisions warrant it … Waging a Good War does, however, sometimes miss the mark. Ricks offers a blizzard of war analogies, routinely breaking the narrative momentum in order to usher military and diplomatic leaders onstage … Too often, Ricks uses the military prism to reach conclusions that will be familiar to even the most casual student of civil rights … Ricks’s reading of events also occasionally descends into the platitudinous, offering insights that apply to almost any pursuit … These reservations, though, do not negate the significance of Ricks’s powerful analytical frame. The book could prove highly influential, inspiring scholars to utilize the lens of military history to re-examine the victories and defeats of other consequential social movements.

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