"In April 1967, Robert F. Kennedy knelt in a crumbling shack in Mississippi trying to coax a response from a listless child. The toddler sat picking at dried rice and beans spilled over the dirt floor as Kennedy touched the boy's distended stomach and stroked his face. After several minutes with little response, the senator walked out the back door, wiping away tears. In Delta Epiphany, Ellen B. Meacham tells the story of Kennedy's visit, while also examining the forces of history, economics, and politics that shaped the lives of the children he met in Mississippi in 1967 and the decades that followed"--