“In his conversation with Robert Kennedy, King refused to heed an appeal for moderation: ‘I am different from my father. I feel the need of being free now.’ This impatience for freedom, acted out by the courageous young Freedom Riders, helped propel a reluctant America at least part of the way down the road to racial justice.” In the same NYT Book Review as the Brinkley piece posted on Monday, Columbia’s Eric Foner favorably reviews Raymond Arsenault’s Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. And, also in history news, the AP profiles historian, Dylanologist, and recent Bancroft winner Sean Wilentz. “There isn’t much that’s gone wrong with the country’s institutions that a good election can’t cure. Or a few good elections. So I have a kind of willful optimism.“