Pulitzer Prize winner speaks in Tampa

Posted Sep 8, 2010 by Lindsay Peterson

Updated Sep 8, 2010 at 01:25 PM

The University of South Florida is bringing Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize winner and unheralded Beatles tribute singer, to Tampa on Sept. 14.

His lecture topic: “Leadership lessons from Martin Luther King and William J. Clinton.”

Branch won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1988 for “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963.” It was the first in a trilogy narrating the history of America’s civil rights era.

His latest book, “The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President,” came out last year. It’s based on conversations Branch recorded with Clinton while Clinton was president.

Branch has edited and written for several magazines, including Washington Monthly, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. He received the National Humanities Medal in 1999 and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

In 2008 he and two friends from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recorded a Beatles tribute called The Blue Album.

He’ll speak at 7 p.m. at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts Jaeb Theater as part of the USF Phi Beta Kappa Faculty Lecture Series.