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This year, the presidential inaugural events coincide with the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Host Michel Martin speaks with scholar Clayborne Carson, about how Dr. King may have viewed the historic challenges facing President Obama.

The Newsweek editor returns with a list of new reads about people with surprising lives — a CIA investigator, a successful businesswoman who started life as a child soldier, and a private-equity pioneer whose domineering personality drove his loved ones away.

Hundreds of thousands of people are participating in volunteer activities nationwide in honor of President Obama's second inauguration and Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. But with budgets tightening and volunteerism stagnant, nonprofits hope they'll get a more permanent boost.

Unlike with his first swearing-in, Barack Obama does not face two ongoing wars and an economy on the verge of collapse. But thorny issues remain, and there's less hope than there was four years ago that Obama can bend Washington to his will.

Join "It's All Politics" blogger Frank James and other NPR journalists to talk about the day's events and the issues coming up in President Obama's second term.

"Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness," he says. "But it does require us to act in our time."

A group of women traveled 18 hours by train from Chicago to Washington, D.C., for Inauguration Day. We hear about why they and others decided to attend this year's festivities, which fall on Martin Luther King Day.

Staten Island's PS22 student choral group performs as people file onto the National Mall hoping for a glimpse of President Obama later.

Four years ago, the National Mall was packed with record crowds. People gathering as President Obama prepares to take the oath of office and deliver a second inaugural address share some of the same sentiments as the crowds from 2009. But the crowds — and the vendors — are less numerous.

Richard Blanco became the fifth poet to read at the inauguration of a United States president.