Click here to listen to Nick Kotz on NBC’s Today Show with Ann Curry.
Click here to listen to Nick Kotz on NPR’s All Things Considered’ March 15, 2005 interview with Michele Norris.
“An important examination of a critical moment in American history — a battle for our nation’s soul. Kotz has given us valuable historical perspectives at a time when it is imperative that we renew the fight for a more perfect union.” — Former President Jimmy Carter
“Kotz’s detailed and gripping account takes readers into the bloody trenches of the Civil Rights movement . . . A fascinating portrait of two leaders working at a time when the low skullduggery of politics really was infused with the highest moral values.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Kotz does a brilliant job telling the stories of these two very different, very charismatic characters and analyzing the forces that drew them together, then drove them apart.” — Kirkus Reviews
Published January, 2005 Houghton Mifflin Publishing
ISBN: 0618088253
Opposites in almost every way, mortally suspicious of each other at first, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., were thrust together in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Both men sensed a historic opportunity and began a delicate dance of accommodation that moved them, and the entire nation, toward the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources — Johnson’s taped telephone conversations, voluminous FBI wiretap logs, previously secret communications between the FBI and the president — Nick Kotz gives us a dramatic narrative, rich in dialogue, that presents this momentous period with thrilling immediacy.
Judgment Days offers needed perspective on a presidency too often linked solely to the tragedy of Vietnam. We watch Johnson applying the arm-twisting tactics that made him a legend in the Senate, and we follow King as he keeps the pressure on in the South through protest and passive resistance. King’s pragmatism and strategic leadership and Johnson’s deeply held commitment to a just society shaped the character of their alliance. Kotz traces the inexorable convergence of their paths to an intense joint effort that made civil rights a legislative reality at last, despite FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s vicious whispering campaign to destroy King. Judgment Days also reveals how this spirit of teamwork disintegrated. The two leaders parted bitterly over King’s opposition to the Vietnam War. In this first full account of the working relationship between Johnson and King, Kotz offers a detailed, surprising account that significantly enriches our understanding of both men and their time.
“Judgment Days in an important examination of a critical moment in American history–a battle for our nation’s soul. Nick Kotz brings new insights to how President Lyndon Johnson, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders achieved an enormous breakthrough for the cause of equality and justice. Kotz has given us valuable historical perspectives at a time when it is imperative that we renew the fight for a more perfect union.” —Former President Jimmy Carter
“A great, serious book by one of the greatest, most serious writers of our time.” —Bob Woodward, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author of Plan of Attack
“The saga of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson engaged together, but apart, in the liberation struggles of the 50’s and 60’s constitutes one of the most profound and moving of all of the stories about America. Nick Kotz has done a masterful job of using newly available historical materials to bring new depth and compassionate understanding to the struggles, triumphs and torments of these two great Americans.” —Roger Wilkins, former Assistant Attorney General under President Johnson, Professor of History at George Mason University, and author of Jefferson’s Pillow
“Nick Kotz has written a marvelous, highly readable book–a thriller, really–about the events that changed America in the 1960s–and about the unlikely partners who led that change.” –David Halberstam, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author of The Best and the Brightest and The Children
“Judgment Days is a compelling reconstruction of the battle for equal rights in the 1960s as seen through the public lives of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King. Kotz’s vivid account of their relationship and its impact on the great transformation in social relations between blacks and whites in America will become essential reading for anyone interested in these two major 20th-century figures and the history of civil rights.” —Robert Dallek, author of Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1960-1973
“Nick Kotz has brought us an important, honest, well-researched and elegant account of two towering American leaders and their impact on a crucial epoch in our history that continues to affect all of our lives.” —Michael Beschloss, author of The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany
“Judgment Days is a powerful and moving story of two men, both southerners, one black, one white, using the law and non-violent means to transform American politics. This is a must-read for anyone to learn how Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr. ushered in a non-violent revolution in America. In doing so, Nick Kotz has made a lasting contribution to the story of how a new day came to the American south.” —Congressman John Lewis, first Chairman of SNCC and the Senior Deputy Whip of the House Democratic Caucus
“Seldom has Democracy worked as efficiently to resolve a major crisis as under the leadership of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Their triumph over racial segregation without massive violence is in direct line of our nation’s founding fathers. But along with their triumph was the Hoover-manipulated tragedy that made it impossible for Martin to help Johnson understand and negotiate our international crisis together as they had progressed through the explosive domestic crisis. Nick Kotz’s Judgment Days adds valuable new perspective and understanding to this important American story.” —Andrew Young, former executive director of SCLC, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, member of Congress, and mayor of Atlanta
Critical Reviews for Judgment Days
“Compelling… An informed political investigation of these two civil rights warriors and the cause for which they fought and, in King’s case, died. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)
11/15/04
“Kotz does a brilliant job telling the stories of these two very different, very charismatic characters and analyzing the forces that drew them together, then drove them apart… A piquant reminder that great social progress occurs when the powerful collaborate rather than joust.” — Kirkus Review 11/15/04
“Kotz’s detailed and gripping account takes readers into the bloody trenches of the Civil Rights movement and the bitter congressional floor battles to get legislation past the segregationist bloc. It is a fascinating portrait of two leaders working at a time when the low skullduggery of politics really was infused with the highest moral values.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
11/29/04
“[A] dramatic story… This well-written study helps us to better understand [these] two men.” — BookPage 1/05
“Painstakingly researched, Judgment Days is a definitive look at the sweeping social victories of a presidency tarnished by the failures of Vietnam.” — Texas Monthly (January’s Book of the Month) 1/05
“A wonderful new book… Kotz relates the epic relationship between Johnson and the Rev. Martin Luther King to achieve breakthroughs in civil rights.” — Hearst Newspapers review by Helen Thomas
“Kotz has specialized in books covering seemingly familiar topics in unfamiliar ways, thus creating new realities for readers… The secret to the success of “Judgment Days” is how Kotz takes two well-documented lives, those of Johnson and King, then looks for the intersections of those lives from Johnson’s ascension to the White House until King’s assassination.” — Des Moines Register review by Steve Weinberg
“The tale of [Johnson and King’s] partnership is ably recounted in an important new book… [Judgment Days] is a reminder that America does have the power to progress, even if not as fast or as willingly as King would have liked.” — Scripps Howard review by Dale McFeatters
“A fresh and vivid account… [a] thorough and thoughtful book [that] rightly emphasizes that ‘without both Johnson and King, the civil rights revolution might have ended with fewer accomplishments and even greater trauma’ than it did.” — Washington Post review by David Garrow
“History doesn’t just happen. It is made, created, shaped. And it helps if somebody writes it down — candidly, factually and with a bit of flair. Which is exactly what Kotz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who had a front row seat to the civil rights dramas… has done.” — National Catholic Reporter review by Joe Feuerherd
“[A] fascinating and informative new history… page after page after page I was surprised to come across details that increased my knowledge of the subject… [Nick Kotz’s] research and writing style mesh well [with] not only a lot of facts and insights, but also vivid descriptions of people and renderings of public and non-public scenes of give and take, triumph and tragedy.” — Savannah Morning News review by Theo Lippman Jr.
“[A]n amazing American story… Kotz explores the complicated relationship between these two extraordinary leaders, both from the South, both excellent organizers, both brilliant at bridging deep divides among their followers.” — KERA 90.1 Review by Lee Cullum
The Texas Institute of Letters has announced that The Harness Maker's Dream is a finalist for their Carr P. Collins Award for Nonfiction. 
SAN ANTONIO - Author Nick Kotz discusses his book titled: The Harness Maker's Dream Nathan Kallison & the Rise of South Texas. The book is about the Kallison family and their journey escaping anti-Semitic laws in Europe, and finding a new home in Texas. Kotz will be at the The Twig Book Shop (306 Pearl Pkwy, San Antonio) on Dec. 6, 5-7pm, and during the Tamale Festival on Dec. 7, 3-5pm.
If you're San Antonio today head over to the Tamales at Pearl Festival. Nick Kotz will be there from 3-5. Grab lunch and learn how Nathan Kallison escaped from Russia and built a new life in the Great State of Texas! It's free and open to the public. 
SAN DIEGO–I suppose the thing that makes me the saddest about The Harness Maker’s Dream is that the “villain” in this excellent-reading story about the Kallison family empire in San Antonio, Texas, was a man that so many of us San Diegans admire: Sol Price, although he is not mentioned by name in this family memoir by journalist Nick Kotz.
Sol Price and his son Robert are among the merchant philanthropists of whom we Jews are most proud in San Diego, just as many Jews of San Antonio revere the memories of Nathan Kallison and his sons Morris and Perry. From what was initially a harness maker’s store, Nathan expanded his enterprise into Kallison’s Big Country Store, and then, so he could understand his customers better and sell them products he could personally recommend, he purchased and developed Kallison Ranch where he raised Texas Polled Hereford cattle. Today the ranch is part of the sprawling South Texas state park known as the Government Canyon Wildlife and Natural Area.
At the beginning of Chapter 14 of this book, the conflict between these two generous, community-minded Jewish families–the Kallisons of San Antonio and the Prices of San Diego–comes to light, but to recognize it, you need to know that Sol Price was the founder of Fed-Mart, in which he pioneered a mass merchandising concept that he later brought to fruition with Price Clubs, which since have been merged into Costco’s. You should also know that Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, freely admits that he got his inspiration for his big-box, discount stores from everything that Sol Price was doing.
Writes Kotz: “Perry Kallison had first glimpsed the dawn of a new era in 1954, the day he attended the grand opening of Fed-Mart, a different kind of department store. Thousands had gathered for the festive evening event in front of the nearly block-long store at Military Road and Zarzamora Street in San Antonio. As the crowd surged into the store, giant searchlights lit the sky like those at
a Hollywood movie premier (sic). In the postwar era, the giant new discounter was promising that its Family Saving Centers would ‘save you money on just about everything for your family, your home, and your car.’ Flanked by four of his department managers from Kallison’s store, Perry carefully checked the prices on the displays of leading brand names in furniture, appliances, clothing and sporting goods equipment. He was stunned.”
In that Sol Price was saving money for the consumers, even more money than they could save at Kallison’s, you’d have to say that Price was doing a service. He was a force for progress in the retailing world, a force which Perry Kallison recognized, but to which Perry, set in his ways, just couldn’t adapt. This was a big difference between Perry and his father, Nathan, the harness maker, who in the early 20th century saw automobiles become increasingly popular and realized that he needed to find some other way to make money besides harness-making.
The truth be known, brothers Perry and Morris had become too complacent in their status as the second-generation owners of a famous store and ranch. Morris had turned his attention to downtown real estate and to being a kingmaker in municipal politics. Perry had transformed what originally was an extended commercial to promote the store into a popular, home-spun “Trading Post” radio program in which he gained celebrity as the dispenser of advice about conservation, sermons on good ol’ fashioned, kindly American values, and purveyor of tidbits about his listeners’ personal accomplishments. The third generations of Kallisons, college educated, tried to convince the brothers that the sprawling store needed to adopt modern accounting methods, and eliminate outdated departments, but the youngsters were brushed aside. Eventually Kallison’s Big Country Store, a landmark for a half-century, went under.
So, the Kallisons’ undoing as a retailing family was not only Sol Price’s fault, but, to a large extent, their own as well.
Nevertheless, you can’t help but feel a measure of regret, especially after reading Kotz’s account of the empire built up by his grandfather Nathan and the generosity of his uncles Perry and Morris. Besides being moving forces in many of San Antonio’s civic and Jewish charities, the Kallisons also helped Israel establish a mohair industry (based on Angora goats raised in Texas). They also were early friends and supporters of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who as a young congressman from Texas was a supporter of federal programs to bring the benefits of electricity to rural ranchers — the Kallisons’ best customers.
What makes Kotz’s book rise above a family memoir is that he skillfully weaves into it nearly a century of social and political history of the United States. In addition to an extensive section on LBJ, I counted references to nine other U.S. Presidents dating back to Theodore Roosevelt. Kotz, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, won fame his exposé about unsanitary conditions in meat packing houses. Given his roots in the cattle industry, his reportage may be construed as yet another example of the Kallisons’ philanthropic legacy.
By Donald H. Harrison
Monday, December 02, 2013
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via 
Jewish ranchers, Jewish cowboys — in Texas? OK, Jewish cowboys did exist, but it would be a stretch to exaggerate their number. However, in the late 19th century and through most of the 20th century, there were definitely Jewish ranches, small, medium and large, in Texas, as this intriguing book illustrates. 
After many years as a journalist—investigating presidents, congressmen, and labor union officials, examining the military-industrial complex, civil rights and social justice issues—I never imagined that the most challenging and rewarding story would be about my own family.
Growing up in San Antonio, I knew little about my Kallison grandparents in whose home my mother and I lived for the first twelve years of my life. They were two of 23 million men, women and children—two million of them Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe—who surged into the United States from 1880 through 1920—and they rarely spoke of their pasts.
Why hadn’t I asked them about their early lives: Where in Russia were they born? What was it like living as Jews under the autocratic thumb of an oppressive czar? How did they escape from Russia? Why did they come to Texas? How did they grow their harness shop into the largest farm and ranch supply business in the Southwest? How did a Jewish merchant become a path-breaking Texas rancher? I had plenty of opportunities to ask those questions and many others. Yet I knew more about Sam Houston and his victory in the Texas War of Independence from Mexico than I did about my own grandparents’ escape from a different revolution in Russia.
I have discovered that my lack of knowledge about my forbearers is not an unusual phenomenon. Like the Kallisons, millions of American families have poorly documented and preserved their past—a loss for the families themselves and for a wiser understanding of our nation’s history. With the Internet and digitization of so many primary source documents, unearthing your family’s past now is possible even for amateurs with limited computer skills.
Key to the exploration of my roots was a Google search of the Kallison name followed by a letter-writing campaign to those who shared it. Of the 100 letters sent, several bore fruit. One distant cousin provided a family history tracing a common ancestor to the tiny Ukrainian village of Ladyzhinka. Googling that town name led me to the Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago where photographs on headstones revealed identities of unknown ancestors in our family photos: my grandfather’s older and younger brothers, Jacob and Samuel Kallison and their mother Dina Elloff Kallison.
Using ancestry.com and fold3.com (formerly footnotes.com), I accessed ships’ logs, census documents, military records, marriage and death certificates, fifty years of city directories, and even high school and college yearbooks. Those primary sources yielded invaluable information about my grandfather, his extended family and the world in which they lived. The census documents alone were a treasure trove of information. Beyond names, addresses, ages, occupations, income, immigration information, and citizenship status, they revealed who could read and write in English, who suff
ered the loss of a child, who had servants or took in boarders, even who owned a radio in the early 20th century.
At Newspaperarchives.com, I found a story on published poll tax lists noting that Nathan Kallison was among those who paid for the “right” to vote in Texas in 1911. Spanning decades, I found hundreds of ads for the Kallison’s downtown store and their Bexar County ranch showing the growth of the family’s dual enterprise. Even the local society pages yielded important minutiae from the everyday lives of Nathan and Anna Kallison and their four children: Parties attended; piano recital pieces; debating team topics; roles in school plays; membership in religious, charitable, and community organizations. Together, they gave me a unique picture of who the Kallisons were and what they valued.
For anyone interested in delving into their own family’s past, agencies at all levels of government are digitizing records. It surprised me to discover that in 1927, during Prohibition, the U.S. government indicted my grandfather and Uncle Morris Kallison for violating laws against the production, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages. I read the court transcript and looked at the photographic evidence against them using digitized National Archives records. I also easily accessed Bexar County, Texas’s amazing collection of online files. Among the land records, licenses, and agreements, I found the 1902 contract for the first parcel of land purchased by my grandparents–who as Jews were denied that right in the Russia of their youth. My grandfather signed his name in Hebrew script; my grandmother, with an “x.”
I now realize that the most important history of our country is not found in the grand events of wars and presidencies, but rather in the everyday lives of our citizens: how they worked hard to support their families; how they coped with hardships, discrimination, and human tragedy; and how they contributed to their own communities and nation. There has never been a better time to research your own family’s past. That is the story only you can tell.
Nick Kotz’s book The Harness Maker's Dream: Nathan Kallison and the Rise of South Texas was published recently. Kotz has received the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, the National Magazine Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award, among others. 
