Rating: 
Summary: Amazing...Must Read!!!
Review: All Souls, a memoir written by Michael Patrick MacDonald, describes in riveting detail the tumultuous history of growing up in the projects of South Boston during the 1960's and 1970's. The story reaches into the depths of our hearts, exposing us to the cruel realities the residents of Southie suffered on a daily basis. Southie was "the best place in the world" according to many residents, but in actuality it was a deep dark secret place ravaged by drugs, corruption, crime and poverty. MacDonald recreates vivid pictures of an often cruel and unforgiving city that seems to have been forgotten by the rest of the world. He is successful in every attempt as he shares his personal tragedies and triumphs with the reader.
Throughout the book, MacDonald discusses a number of different events; some of which permanently alter his view of the world and others that provide glimpses of hope in the most trying of times. The stories guide readers through his family's early days of living in Columbia Point among high racial tensions in a mostly African-American neighborhood, to moving into a house with his grandfather in Jamaica Plain, and finally ending up at 8 Patterson Way in The Old Colony projects of South Boston. Old Colony is a mostly Irish Catholic community where eighty-five percent of households collected welfare and many of the children were raised without a father. As MacDonald travels to and from some of these places, he expresses many interesting comments and observations. While living with his grandfather, he and his siblings were given a glimpse of what he calls a "normal life," living in a home with an actual yard, and playing with neighbors who were regular kids living in houses where each of their parents worked daily. Unfortunately, just as the family becomes comfortable, the grandfather decides to sell the house, and not-so-kindly asks them to leave. MacDonald's "Ma" pulls some strings with a local politician named Dapper O'Neill, and the family receives an apartment at Old Colony by way of The Boston Housing Authority.
As the family moves into their new apartment in Southie, MacDonald talks about some of challenges they confronted. He says, speaking of his own experiences, "We got along much better with the black kids in Jamaica Plain, who seemed to have more in common with us than these other kids with Irish parents" (p51). Although there exists a great deal of tragedy in many of these stories, MacDonald does not allow us to wallow for long, but rather he lifts readers up through scenes of humor and inspiration. He explains the first few weeks at 8 Patterson Way with lighthearted stories about capturing cockroaches using glasses of Sprite, talking to people with an "Irish Whisper" and watching action unfold on the streets below with his siblings. However, he promptly returns to the harsh realities of his world where he describes such daunting situations as his mother sitting in the doorway with a shotgun, threatening to kill anyone who has a problem with her family. MacDonald speaks at great lengths of the unity present among his neighbors during the busing riots in 1974. They joined together and fought the city - throwing rocks at buses and police, holding protest marches, and demanding an end to busing. These scenes are depicted in such explicit detail that the author makes readers feel as if they are in the heart of the action. He provides riveting eyewitness accounts of some the most significant events in Boston's unscrupulous past.
As we become more familiar with the Old Colony environment, we learn of the large scale violence and drugs causing great turmoil within the community. Residents are in desperate need of rescue, but no one seems to care. MacDonald talks in excruciating detail of the great number of murders and suicides occurring on a daily basis in Southie. He allows readers to experience the pain and devastation of losing four siblings, by drawing us into their lives through emotionally powerful stories, and then pulling the rug out from under our feet, sparing no details in describing their painful and horrific deaths. Violence plays such a significant role in these people's lives that for some, it almost becomes acceptable. Unfortunately many of the crimes in the neighborhood, even those committed in broad daylight in front of forty eyewitnesses, remain unsolved due not only to corrupt police and politicians, but more so, to the inherent Southie code of honor: "In Southie, the worst thing you could do was be a snitch" (p67). The infamous Whitey Bulger, now a fugitive from justice, upholds this code dutifully as he floods the streets with drugs and has many innocent people killed while at the same time maintaining a squeaky clean reputation among residents.
One cannot help but feel a great sense of sympathy for MacDonald and his family. All too often people turn their eyes and ears away, refusing to acknowledge crime and violence in their communities. All Souls is a true example of the human spirit prevailing, even when confronted in the most adverse of circumstances. Michael MacDonald's ability to turn hate and anger into love and compassion is as compelling as it is admirable. He grew up in complete poverty, lost four of his siblings to violence and drugs, watched an innocent brother spend time in jail for a murder he was wrongly accused of, and never experienced a real father figure in his life; yet he continues the fight against injustice, racism and prejudice. His organization, Citizens for Safety, formed in 1996, has since run many successful gun buyback programs in the city of Boston. Additionally, he has helped to establish support groups for parents who have lost children to violence and drugs. His story is truly inspiring, so much so, that MacDonald makes us want to stand up and join in his crusade for truth, justice and equality.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone from Boston should read this book
Review: Before the gentrification of Southie and Dot, these areas contained Boston's infamous white "underclass." This book is the story of a fascinating family that lived in Southie in the 70's and 80's, and witnessed and participated in some of the most important events to happen in Boston in the 20th century.The book is really divided into two parts. The first part takes place when the author was a very young child, and is primarily about his older siblings. It is the 70's, when the bussing riots are threatening to destroy Boston and the Winter Hill gang was hanging around in a certain auto body shop. The author makes it clear that a lot of what he tells about these events is second hand, primarily from his siblings and his mother. However, since they were very active in so many events, and since this book concentrates on the whole family and not just the author, this does not detract from the veracity of the book at all. The second part takes place in the 1980's, when, in the aftermath of the Charles Stewart fiasco, the police are looking for a martyr to prove that they're not rascist. They settle on the author's younger brother. The most fascinating thing about this book his how the author manages to chronicle how a family and a community can disintigrate while remaining as strong as ever. Not everyone in the family, or the community makes it through the book, and as Southie is quickly becoming hot real estate it is sad to think of the community that is being condo'd over. Anyone who is interested in knowing why Boston is the way it is now should read this book. Boston is still living with the repurcussions of the period that this book covers, and this book offers a fascinating first (and sometimes second) hand account of the events that shaped our city.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone from Boston should read this book
Review: Before the gentrification of Southie and Dot, these areas contained Boston's infamous white "underclass." This book is the story of a fascinating family that lived in Southie in the 70's and 80's, and witnessed and participated in some of the most important events to happen in Boston in the 20th century. The book is really divided into two parts. The first part takes place when the author was a very young child, and is primarily about his older siblings. It is the 70's, when the bussing riots are threatening to destroy Boston and the Winter Hill gang was hanging around in a certain auto body shop. The author makes it clear that a lot of what he tells about these events is second hand, primarily from his siblings and his mother. However, since they were very active in so many events, and since this book concentrates on the whole family and not just the author, this does not detract from the veracity of the book at all. The second part takes place in the 1980's, when, in the aftermath of the Charles Stewart fiasco, the police are looking for a martyr to prove that they're not rascist. They settle on the author's younger brother. The most fascinating thing about this book his how the author manages to chronicle how a family and a community can disintigrate while remaining as strong as ever. Not everyone in the family, or the community makes it through the book, and as Southie is quickly becoming hot real estate it is sad to think of the community that is being condo'd over. Anyone who is interested in knowing why Boston is the way it is now should read this book. Boston is still living with the repurcussions of the period that this book covers, and this book offers a fascinating first (and sometimes second) hand account of the events that shaped our city.
Rating: 
Summary: 'ALL SOULS' very disappointing!
Review: Highly anecdotal and unreferenced, the memoir: 'ALL SOULS: A Family Story from Southie' (c. 2000) by Mr. Michael Patrick MacDonald, simultaneously presented an unquestionable account of the author's tragic family life while presenting a dubious description of the neighborhood of South Boston. Any life-long resident of South Boston who reads ALL SOULS will recognize the many errors in this memoir and the author's reliance on hyperbole for dramatic effect; such as referring to a fist fight as a 'riot' or an orderly protest as a 'mob'. The author further uses terminology not part of South Boston vocabulary, such as: Racist, Scapegoat, riots, molotov cocktails, and 'Lace Curtain Irish' (which is straight out of the book: 'Liberty's Chosen Home' p. 30 and not a Boston figure of speech). ALL SOULS is further marred by the many suppositions, innuendos, and non-sequiturs used to describe residents and the neighborhood: such as the author's detailed descriptions of Whitey Bulger, a man the author admitted he never met; or the mentioning throughout ALL SOULS of the bar, the *Irish Rover*, which isn't even in South Boston but three miles away in Dorchester. In fact, the author seemed to have had most of his Southie experiences on the South Boston/Dorchester border, blurring those two distinct neighborhoods. While the careful reader will not question the authenticity of the author's account of his family tragedies, some of which appear self-inflicted, the MacDonald family, as presented in ALL SOULS, had serious issues way before they moved to the Old Colony projects - therefore, 'ipse dixit', those tragedies 'happened' in South Boston, they were not 'caused' by South Boston, as implied in ALL SOULS! For the vast majority of South Boston's diverse & multi-cultural 32,000 residents, except for forced busing, Southie was a good place to grow up! Neither autobiography nor diary, the memoir ALL SOULS is obviously valueless for serious historical research. The author mistook digressions for correlations, as Mr. Michael Patrick MacDonald presented a heart rendering account of his family's tragedies along with a dubious and mechanistic opinion of South Boston history and events. As a complement to ALL SOULS, please read: 'THAT OLD GANG OF MINE: A History of South Boston' (c. 1991) by Southie native Frank J. Loftus, which presented a less posit history of South Boston than the flawed ALL SOULS.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not great.
Review: I love to laugh at the nasty reviews below -- particularly the one from the man in Japan, questioning "All Souls" accuracy. As if he'd know what is and isn't true in Southie! Anyway, Michael Patrick MacDonald's "All Souls" is a powerful piece of non-fiction -- amazing to read, and hard to put down. The author deserves every success, and none of the criticism.
Rating:
Summary: I love this book!
Review: I'm a Black female who lived in Boston for five years in the '90s. While I was there, I would never have dreamed about setting foot in 'Southie', which I'd gathered quite a negative, stereotyped impression about from friends, the media, and just the general culture around Boston, which seemed to regard it as some backwards, redneck inner-city hamlet. But this summer, while back in Boston for a visit, something made me pick this book up and purchase it. I was immediately drawn into Michael MacDonald's story, and especially his description of Southie. I love his writing style, and really appreciate his honesty and his willingness to break through the neighborhood pressure to keep up that stifling code of silence about the real troubles in the area. Reading the defensive reviews of some of the South Boston natives reminds me of the same defensiveness that Black people sometimes put on, when they get angry with people who "air our family laundry" out in public. I'm going to recommend this book to my bookclub, because I feel that more people need to know that inner-city poverty and pathology belongs to no particular race or creed, as MacDonald so vivdly proves in his memoir. This book was about the common humanity within everyone, no matter what the skin color. This is the inspiring essence that I took from this book; the reminder that, underneath all the appearances, we are all One, with similar desires, dreams, goals, aspirations. Some of us are born into comfortable circumstances, and some of us are not, but we can all learn from each other, if we are so inclined. Kudos to Michael MacDonald for writing this touching and bold book, and much gratitude to him, for making a positive difference in the world through all the amazing programs and work he is doing to help parents and kids of all colors.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, Eye-Opening, and Tragically Irish
Review: Ignore the attacks - All Souls is beautiful and timeless. It is at once a story of 20th century American turmoil and also a story with the Irish tone and Irish rhythm, calling to mind Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. But above all else it is, as described on the cover, a family story. A story written throughout a childhood, it tells the tale of a family torn violently apart by fate and circumstance, yet in some form still together, still beating and moving on with force. What many people, including some of my fellow Irish-American Boston residents, fail to grasp is that this story is not an analysis of a neighborhood; it is nothing historical but rather a vibrant story that drives straight into the core of what it means to be Irish and American simultaneously, and how the joy, loyalty, and fierce pride combine with hypocrisy and silence to produce a perplexing Irish-American identity. The story hits home for me, and it's truth is not necessarily in the trivial names of bars or individuals as some myopic readers contend. The truth comes in its message, in the power and emotion in Michael Patrick MacDonald's pride and disgust for the neighborhood that can be at the same time "the best place on earth" and a "hellhole." Do not fight the contradictions - it is contradictory and beautiful as a novel. It's American; it's Irish; it's human; and it's timeless. I urge anyone to read this phenomenal piece of work by MacDonald!
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and honest view
Review: Ignore the pathetic attacks below -- how ridiculous to try and 'discredit' MacDonald's memoir which is of course a personal history -- and a very compelling one. The author reveals a very detailed, complex and moving history of this neighborhood. Southie is 'deep', and it is a powerful and engaging read.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: In "All Souls" Michael MacDonald writes an autobiographical account of growing up in an Irish-American ghetto - Boston's "Southie." I can't say I enjoyed all of the book - some of it is saddening - but I did find it to be well-written, powerful and engaging. The story is an old one - people trapped and destroyed by ugly social conditions - but it is also a story of strength and survival.
I don't know much about Boston or Irish-Americans - I grew up in the south and now live in AZ - but I do have a concern for the plight of the American underclass which I believe stems largely from my experience in Vietnam. I did find some similarities between "All Souls" and Jim Goad's "The Redneck Manifesto" - expecially the way in which racial consciousness suppresses class consciousness among the lower classes - but I believe "All Souls" is in some ways the better book. It's understated and notably lacking in self pity.
I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the American underclass
Rating:
Summary: A story that has to be told
Review: Last year as soon as I read in a weekly magazine that there was a story of South Boston, I immediately had to buy it. Being that I have lived in Southie--a place where you see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil--that is place that you love and hate with a community that has lots of pride. Michael Patrick MacDonald survives the violence, crime, injustices, and coruption that no one will admit to, that comes along with living in the projects of Southie. The MacDonald family suffers so many losses too many times. the opening line to the book reads.....I WAS BACK IN SOUTHIE, "THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD," as Ma used to say before the kids died. ....after that you have to read on!
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