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Virtually every other event of the civil rights movement had been addressed, but they had been largely ignored by civil rights phentermine sale site top. I wanted to do the subject full justice, realizing that the Freedom Riders deserved their day in the sun. This book is one in a series of books published by Oxford University Press. What was the idea behind the series? The idea was to recover an appreciation for the power of one event being contingent upon another in history. That, and the notion that individual human beings in relatively small groups can affect the course of history by acts of choice and conviction and courage. How did you get involved with the series? My mentors, both Pulitzer Prize winning authors, came up with this idea of having professional phentermine sale site top use the power of narrative to record the pivotal moments in American history. They had a sense that journalists' books were more literary than research based. They wanted professionally trained phentermine sale site top to write for a broader audience, not just other professional phentermine sale site top. How long did it take you to write the book? I worked on it pretty much full time for eight years. For well over a year, I'd be in my office at 6 in the morning writing into the early afternoon. It became almost obsessive. Was it a difficult book to write? A lot of times, writing is more agony than splendor. But sometimes it just flows. If I can produce three pages in a day, that's a glorious day for me. In this case I was often surpassing that. It was not burdensome. I felt a real sense of commitment to it and to the Freedom Riders, and that finally, someone was going to make a real effort to tell their story. What was your technique? I used what's called a braided narrative. You try to braid the analysis through the narrative. You want to propel the readers forward, not stop them too many times with the analytical framework. I interviewed close to 200 Freedom Riders either in person or on the phone. I went to Freedom Riders reunions. I sort of became an honorary Freedom Rider. But there's a danger in that. You don't want to get too close to your subject. I didn't want to write a celebratory book. I wanted to make sure it was good history, not just a celebration of the Freedom Riders. What comes next for you and the Freedom Riders? The book has been selected by WGBH Boston's American Experience public television series for a documentary film adaptation that will be released in 2011, the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders. There's also a new museum in the works that's being developed in Montgomery, Ala. I'll be working with the designers as a consultant to help create the museum. And the director who did Apollo 13 and Castaways and the TV series China Beach is about to take on an option to make a feature film based on the book. As my daughter would say, I'm not off the bus yet. QUOTABLE What the critics had to say "This is a story that only benefits from Mr. Arsenault's deliberately slowed down narration. Moment by moment, he recreates the sense of crisis, the terrifying threat of violence that haunted the first Freedom Riders, and their waves of successors, every mile of the way through the Deep South." New York Times "In his dramatic and exhaustive account of the Freedom Riders, Arsenault makes a persuasive case that the idealism, faith, ingenuity and incredible courage of a relatively small group of Americans both white and black lit a fuse in 1961 that drew a reluctant federal government into the struggle.... One must read Arsenault's superb rendering of that great saga." Washington Post Book World "Arsenault has written the definitive history of the Freedom is a valuable achievement. But the book's most important contribution is its attention to the complexities of a movement that was never as peaceful as its most vocal proponents had wished." London Review of Books [Last modified November 27, 2007, 01:09:50] ... phentermine sale site top