MR. BROKAW: Yes. Dr. King when I was in Atlanta, I went to Ebenezer Baptist Church and sat up in the balcony when he preached one day. And Nelson Rockefeller had given the church an organ. Atlanta was described as the city too busy to hate, and it was far ahead of most Southern cities, but it was still defined by race in those days. And he didn’t get a lot of recognition from the white establishment. When he won the Nobel Prize, for example, they had a hard time organizing a dinner for him in Atlanta and getting the white establishment to come to it. And I heard him preach on other occasions as well.

Bobby Kennedy I, I covered a fair amount, certainly in the closing days of his campaign around the country. He changed more than almost any other person that I saw in public life. He had been the tough, brittle, in many ways, some said “ruthless” guy who carried out the orders for his brother. He became a much more compassionate candidate, and I think he really changed the way we saw the country as a result of his campaign.

MR. RUSSERT: You also dedicate the book, and it is extraordinary to read about the United States Marine Corps Captain Gene Kimmel.

MR. BROKAW: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: Tell us about him.

MR. BROKAW: Still hard for me to talk about it. He, he was one of my very best friends in college. He, he went to Vietnam as a Marine pilot. He’d been in 101^st Airborne. And he came to college, and he was kind of an ornery Steve McQueen type, just smarter than hell, very daring. Had no money, was married, and he had a banged up knee. But when he got out of college with his masters degree, with—under Doc Farber, my old mentor, he wanted to get in the Marines, and he wanted to fly. And he did. And he had first tour, got burned up on the flight line, insisted that he was going to go back. I said, “This is crazy. You don’t want to do this.” And he was flying something called the OV-10, which was a little gunship and close support, and he was shot down. And the day that we got the call, his wife was on her way to our house to stay with us, to meet him in Hawaii. And when we buried him in South Dakota that fall, I just was in a rage. I went back there two weeks ago because we’re doing a documentary for the History Channel on that time, and I thought I was, you know, steeled for going back to his graveside. And I thought about the life I’ve had, and the life he didn’t have, and it seemed so unfair.

MR. RUSSERT: Tom Brokaw. The book is “Boom! Voices of the Sixties,” an extraordinary composition of the music, the issues, the people of that time. A perfect bookend to “The Greatest Generation.”

MR. BROKAW: It is. It’s, it’s the extension of it. And I think a lot of these people who are in there, Tim, you’ll find are going through a reflection in their lives, just like the greatest generation did. Those days were much more complex than World War II, of course. World War II, everybody rallied behind the flag, had pretty much a linear point of view. We’re still trying to work our way through the ‘60s.

MR. RUSSERT: The book is “Boom!” and they’ll be—have more of—with Tom Brokaw and his new book on our Web site Take Two Extra this afternoon, mtp.msnbc.com.

That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week. We’ll be joined by Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. That’s next Sunday right here on MEET THE PRESS, an exclusive interview with Barack Obama. If it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.

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