Book excerpt: The definitive biography of one of the most complex public figuresof 20th century America. A native South Carolinian, Marshall Frady was a journalist for over twenty-five years, writing principally on political figures and racial and social tensions in the American culture, first as a correspondent for Newsweek, then for Life, Harper's, Esquire, The New York Review of Books, The Sunday Times of London, Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. In the 1980s, Frady was chief writer and host of ABC News Documentary Series "Closeup," for which he won two Emmy's, the Cine Golden Eagle, and the duPont-Columbia Award, and a correspondent for "Nightline." In the 90's, he co-wrote the screenplay for the TNT miniseries "George Wallace," directed by John Frankenheimer, which won three CableACE awards, a Golden Globe for best miniseries, the Humanitas Award for writing, three Emmy awards and the Peabody Award. He also wrote and narrated the PBS "Frontline" Documentary, "The Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson." He was the author of seven books: Wallace (1968), Across a Darkling Plain: An American's Passage Through the Middle East (1971), Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (1979), Southerners: A Journalist's Odyssey (1980), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (1996), and Martin Luther King Jr. (2002), a volume in the Penguin Lives series. He died on March 9, 2004.