In this first book-length biography of John Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis’s upbringing in rural Alabama, his early activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and his decades of service as the “conscience of Congress.” Arsenault provides an authoritative, synthetic biography, written with both the benefit of his personal relationship with Lewis as well as a career as an esteemed biographer and professor of Southern history.