Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Ricks

has this new book out called Waging a Good War, which looks at the civil rights movement through the prism of military history and strategy,

you know, comparing the moves and decisions of civil rights leaders to generals, just, you know, without

the military might. But when you follow this analogy, it's interesting to look at who were the

soldiers. In this interview with Empire Steve Inskeep, Rix talks about the campaign in Birmingham,

Alabama, where civil rights leaders were up against the notoriously racist head of public safety, Bull Connor.

And one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s advisors comes up with the perfect plan to deal with him.

Send in the kids.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors. On our new show,

Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you

understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or

wherever you get your podcasts.

Tom Ricks is one of the most distinguished war correspondence of our time.

He covered the war in Iraq, among other conflicts, and has written many books.

Now he has turned his experience to the history of a nonviolent campaign for change.

His book, Waging a Good War, is about the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Those civil rights protesters chose not to arm themselves. Tom Rick says their effort was much like a war, and they succeeded by following principles of war. You're looking at how to conduct a

sustained campaign over years against a violent enemy.

And what a lot of people in the movement did, Martin Luther King, James Lawson, and others,

is turned to the works of Gandhi, the great Indian independence leader,

who himself insisted that nonviolence was actually quite militant.

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