Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

In this thoughtful picture of racial and social conflict, Boston's fight over school integration in the 1960s and 1970s is portrayed through the battle's effects on three families.

Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

Lukas accomplishes for urban history what Alex Haley did for black history by personalizing and chronicling the decade after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Lukas selects representatives of the three dominant ethnic groups in Boston-Yankee, black, and Irish-whose uneasy truce was shattered during this volatile decade, and weaves into their histories the lives of five prominent Boston figures representative of church, state, and citizen's groups. The urban crisis triggered by the busing issue is pivotal for Lukas. Each chapter focuses on one family or prominent citizen. Well written and carefully researched, Lukas's book succeeds in making the issues of the decade vivid and gripping. This book is an excellent introduction for students and the general public alike on how race, class, and ethnicity intersect in people's lives.-D. Campbell, Indiana University-Bloomington