Rating: 
Summary: A chilling, graphic, yet very sentimental work.
Review: Michael MacDonald's All Souls will undoubtedly be remembered as a classic. Reminiscent of Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promisedland, this book gives a vivid description of life in a tough urban neighborhood where crime, drugs, and premature death are a way of life. Nevertheless, MacDonald also shows the readers the positive side of South Boston, an urban village where loyalty, care for one's neighbors, religious devotion, and a sense of community are highly valued. MacDonald also speaks to the issue of urban gentrification and how it may serve to undo some of these positive values of "Southie" and other old ethnic neighborhoods throughout the U.S. While covering the experiences of one family, All Souls places a human face on the historical accounts of the struggle of Irish Americans in Boston, a struggle I am somewhat familiar with, and which I also gave some coverage of in my book Desegregation in Boston and Buffalo (SUNY Press, 1998). All Souls will be in libraries, classrooms, and in the backpacks of college students for many years to come.
Rating:
Summary: I Can't Get this Book Out of My Head
Review: I was born just outside of Boston to a middle class Irish American suburban family, and went to college at BC, which is predominantly Irish Catholic. I have lived in downtown Boston for the past 20 years, in the Back Bay, an affluent 'blue blood' neighborhood, not far from Southie, yet planets apart. I am only 2 years older than Mike, and had no idea families so similar to mine were living in another world, yet only 5 miles away. This book made me laugh from the gut, cry real tears and feel their pain, think about social injustice and wonder what would have happened had these children lived my life, or me theirs. I can't stop thinking about this book, and everywhere I go, I look into the eyes of teens around town, wondering if they're Irish eyes, and try to catch a peak at their wrists to see if I can spot a "Southie Dot". I hope Mike writes a sequel; I'd love to know what he and Ma and the kids that survived are doing now, and how their lives have changed, if at all, after the success of this book.
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: All Souls very disappointing!
Review: I am a life long permanent resident of South Boston (my father was a factory worker with an eighth grade education and my mother was a housewife who collected S&H green stamps and shopped at Morgies to stretch a buck during the Christmas layoffs, and the Gate of Heaven Church is my parish) and I had very negative mixed feelings when I finished reading the book 'ALL SOULS: A Family Story from Southie' by Mr. Michael Patrick MacDonald. First I wish to congratulate the author for getting past the liberal censors with the facts of the black racism against whites we endured in Boston in the late 1960s; and that the idiot Boston police have a lot to be desired. But I feel he is purposely misleading on a number of points on the history of my hometown, South Boston: First of all, the MacDonald family is not originally from South Boston; they moved in late in the game! Now the points: 1. The real secret of Southie is that South Boston has a population of over 32,000 which means that there are really thousands of poor working class South Boston families who worked tough jobs yet stayed off welfare without resorting to crime, violence, or drug dealing to supplement their meager incomes. The three housing projects in South Boston's lower end are not a true representative sample of all South Boston people (but neither is the Point!) 2. Mr. MacDonald consistently perpetuated the Irish majority myth, when he knew fully well that the Irish are a very vocal minority in South Boston, outnumbered by Lithuanians, Polish, Albanians, and Italians in that order, followed by Greeks, Germans, Latvians, Estonians, and Czeckoslavakians. 3. the author had the annoying habit of couching his rhetoric in liberal jargon, emphasising: Riots, Irish, Scapegoats, Racism, Mobs, Molotov Cocktails, Progressive, (and 'Lace Curtain Irish' which is straight out of the book 'LIBERTY'S CHOSEN HOME'(page 30) and not a Boston figure of speech). 4. Using Whitey Bulger as the new 'scapegoat' for all his family ills when they simply could have said 'NO' to Mr. Bulger. 5. The great majority of Southie's 32,000 mixed ethnic population never heard of the MacDonald family or the tragedies which happened to them in the Old Colony projects. 6. Mr. MacDonald fully mentioned the unwanted presence of the KKK in Southie during forced busing but strangely or purposely omited the presence of communist agitators such as INCAR, Spartacus League, the Maoist International Movement, or the Progressive Labor Party who were organizing and whipping up trouble (and some P.L.P. commies are still present today in Southie's projects! hence this book). 7. Mr. MacDonald fully perpetuated the liberal myths about South Boston residents (being all Irish, drunks, and all welfare hounds). 8. The bar he mentioned throughout his book, the *Irish Rover* isn't even in South Boston but three miles away in Dorchester! 9. Mr. MacDonald is a little too young to be mentioning "Old" South Boston in any capacity, and 10. as presented in his book, the MacDonald family had serious issues way before they moved to South Boston!! South Boston represents the working class rejection of Marxism which annoys liberals to no end, yet Mr. MacDonald in 'ALL SOULS' continually refuses to accept the responsibility for his own actions or the decisions of his family members when they willingly got involved in drugs, alcohol and crime! - which suggests the materialist/Marxist view that we are all controlled by our environment and have no free will! For the vast majority of South Boston residents, except for forced busing, Southie was a good place to grow-up. The book 'ALL SOULS' is filled with some truth and a whole lot of inconsistencies; i.e., hyperbole, inuendo, supposition, stereotypes, misinformation, and logical fallacies. ...
Rating: 
Summary: hitting home
Review: Wow! I just finished reading the book...it brought a tear to my eye. As an African-American woman four years older tham Michael, born in the same housing project as he...the story hit home. I commend Mr. MacDonald for his poignant memoir. I grew up in Roslindale, at the time a predominately Irish-Catholic neighborhood, where I lived in fear of the "Southie" types. My family even experienced first-hand being chased out of Southie when I was a teen. My leaving Boston after high school was pretty much a reaction to the racism that permeated the city at that time. It was refreshing to get insight to the "other side" through Mr. MacDonald's brutal honesty. My heart does not bleed for his family or the people in the "best place in the world", but it does help me to understand the pathology that divide and conquer creates. And how when all is said and done and people have died...be all have much more in common than we'd like to think. It also has inspired me to tell my own story and look forward to more tales from Southie from this sensitive, daring writer. Thanks for the insight and memories!
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: A disappointment of tedious proportions
Review: This story loses its potential punch, since it purports to enlighten, yet overlooks an opportunity to mention obvious lessons.
The subtext in MacDonald's book, that it is really kind of cute when little kids steal and scam; or that dressing and behaving like a lady or a gentleman cannot be taught or learned if one is poor; or that babies and disasters just appear out of nowhere, is a problem. What are readers to learn from people who: admit that they know what behaviors to avoid, but are too self indulgent to avoid them; or who know who the criminals are, but accept that they are really sort of good criminals; or who think that wearing spike heels and short skirts is somehow a dignified priority for a mom who is rearing children?
Newsflash! When you have children to care for, you do NOT bring men home to play.
Choices have consequences, and even in the most severe circumstances, the choices people make have a great deal to do with what happens next. This book drops the ball.
Rating: 
Summary: Of questionable accuracy!
Review: A dysfunctional family moved to South Boston; dysfunctional family gets into trouble in South Boston; dysfunctional family moves out of South Boston; dysfunctional family blames South Boston; and a dysfunctional family member is coached to write about South Boston. A simple progression! A lousy book!
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: Southie in 2004, which has undergone urban gentrification over the last decade and a half, has become the yuppie, hot community to live in in Boston these days.
In 1995 however, I drove through Southie for the first time...I was 17 years old. I knew that my parents would be upset with me if they found out. Being a naive 17 year old, I didn't realize WHY they would be upset.
I read All Souls this past year, and I can begin to understand the view my parents may have had of South Boston. I can't tell you whether the book is a realistic portrayal of South Boston at the time...I was too young, and too far removed (living in the "suburbs").
I can however say that the book helped me to understand the strong Irish, Southie pride that is always talked about. The book is, at times, intense in it's descriptions. If you're from the area, you should read this book. I found it to be a good first-hand historical reference of the busing in South Boston, and the organized crime which permeated the society.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: As someone who grew up in Southie's projects in the 90s as opposed to the 80s, I can say that this book reflects my experience too in Southie. Most amazing is the historical context that it has given me -- busing riots, the influx of cocaine, organized crime etc.. -- that has help me to better understand this place today: a neighborhood slipping away due to the tragic extremes of painkillers and gentrification, which too often seem to go hand in hand.
Beyond the story itself, this book has an amazing storytelling style, and one that anyone who knows anything about post-traumatic stress will recognise in the matter-of-fact tone. One of the best books I've ever read, along with such classics as Manchild in the Promised land.
The Southie guy who gave this book a bad review and calls it Marxist etc... gives the same "anti-liberal" rant for every book he reviews. he's actually very funny if you check out his other reviews.. like Archie Bunker, but as a very recent college graduate.
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