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Rating: 
Summary: Far from fictional
Review: During the time when i read this book I was not just learning about a stranger but and actually part of me. I found out after the completion of the book that this was a story about my family's history. I founded the book to interesting and helpful. I read the book last year when I was seventeen. After reading it I passed it all to my peers hoping that they could learn something about themselves as well. I feel that this is a great book not for just African- American teens but all growing up and struggling in the inner-city. Also, this book should be as a tool to use in a social sciences classes. Because it helps people understand the differences between different ethnic groups. It answers alot of the questions that people have today. There is always a debate about slavery and the effects it caused. People argued that its in the past and it time to move on, but fail to realize that it still affects those same people who have yet to even come close to understanding who they are and where their from. All Gods Children is one part of the bridge that is being built to understand our surroundings and I'll recommend this book to any person that is willing to grow.
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Summary: Must read
Review: Excellent!! One of the most profounding books I have ever read. Any, and every serious student of Sociology, Criminology, law, psychology, or the black family should read this book and know the story of Willie Bosket.
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Summary: All God's Children
Review: I borrowed this book from the library several years ago and remain so moved by it that I just ordered a copy for myself. As soon as it arrives I am going to read it again and then I will encourage every adult I know to read it. The book is poignant, illuminating, and heartwrenching. The writer's style as I recall was superb as he wrote it objectively and in a manner that allows readers to come to their own conclusions. I have never written a review of a book, and doubt I will again, but I was affected so much by this book I feel I need to let everyone know what an excellent book it is.
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Summary: victim's daughter
Review: I enjoyed this book because it was really interesting to listen to the events of the day that led up to Willie stabbing my father, corrections officer Earl Porter.
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Summary: Interesting Book!
Review: I found this book interesting as well as heartbreaking. When I first opened it up, I was unable to put it down. Alcoholism, physical abuse, sexual abuse, incest, rejection, and neglect were 6 factors in which had been existent within the Bosket family. It seems as if the only way they had learned to fight were with either weapons or with their bare hands. One of the saddest situations included Butch and the fact that he had raped his girlfriend's 6 year-old daughter, "Kristin". The girlfriend's name was Donna and she seemed to be a weak-willed woman. I couldn't believe that she had actually ignored her daughter's cries while he was raping her. I just kept reading it over and over again: 'Kristin could see her mother standing in the darkened doorway of her room, and she asked her to make Butch stop. When Donna heard her daughter's plea, she said, "No. I won't stop him."' In the end, because she had allowed it to go on, she had lost custody of both "Kristin" and her twin brother, Matthew. She was so taken by Butch that she seemed to care more about him than her own children and they hadn't even known each other that long. She lost her life because she had decided to follow behind him as if she didn't have any backbone. Sad.I think part of Willie Jr.'s anger had been directed toward his grandfather, James Bosket (Butch's father), because he had sexually abused him on numerous occasions. I found it very disgusting and shocking. Willie was a young boy and had no idea what molestation meant and that it was wrong. Another part of his anger seemed to be directed toward his mother, Laura. Although she was trying very hard to raise Willie, she didn't make the situation any better by repeatedly telling him that he was going end up just like his father or giving him more negative feedback than positive. Her neglect and rejection of him was what drove him to threaten to commit suicide by jumping in front of an oncoming train. But then you have to look at it from her side also. She had become a single mother because Butch had gone to prison for killing two people in a pawn shop, leaving her to take care of Willie all by herself. She felt rejected herself because he had promised to be there for her and their son. She thought that she was going to live a happy life with the man she loved and he winds up going to prison. He even forced her to divorce him. I guess she resented him for it and took it out on Willie Jr. By the time Jr. was 21, he had gotten married to a woman named, Sharon (who wanted to bed him right after she had met him), who had a daughter by another man. I think Willie accepted her marriage proposal and had taken on the responsibility of helping her raise her daughter because he wanted to fulfill his dream of wanting a family. On top of that, the relationship seemed to be based on lust, not love. I was glad to read that Jr. had calmed down quite a bit by 1995; I think because he's getting older, he realizes how much time he had wasted and actually does have remorse for the innocent people he had murdered and robbed and their families who suffered losing them. I'm not quite sure if he has been broken by the same system he was against but now, he has no choice but to sit in prison awaiting his release, which will be no time soon. As a matter of fact, he'll be an elderly man by then.
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Summary: Absolutely amazing, an excellent read, very insightful
Review: Probably the best book I've read since Malcolm X. You know its good when you've got 15 people to review it and they all rate it high. This book is very hard to find, so if you get a chance to get your hands on it, then buy it. The first 100 pages, or so, are good, but not as good as the rest of the book. But they are absolutely necessary to understanding the book. The book is very well written and researched. It took me through the full gambit of emotions. I couldn't put it down.
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Summary: Absolutely amazing, an excellent read, very insightful
Review: Probably the best book I've read since Malcolm X. You know its good when you've got 15 people to review it and they all rate it high. This book is very hard to find, so if you get a chance to get your hands on it, then buy it. The first 100 pages, or so, are good, but not as good as the rest of the book. But they are absolutely necessary to understanding the book. The book is very well written and researched. It took me through the full gambit of emotions. I couldn't put it down.
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Summary: Excellent read: informative, sad and chilling
Review: This book was exceptionally well written and well researched, giving a very detailed account of how violence in the African American community, and primarily in the Bosket family, got its start from the violence that was the norm in South Carolina, where the Boskets came from. The story of Willie's family, his ancestors all the way up to his parents and siblings, is a sobering one that explains how families can be "doomed" when they remain outside of the mainstream and do not have access to opportunity or given any hope. Butterfield does a good job describing the criminal justice system as it relates to children and how we have come to treat 12 and 13 year old children like adults. But what is being done to stop this madness?
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Summary: Two books in one
Review: This is really two books in one, though they are tied together seamlessly. On the one hand, the book is a fascinating and detailed true crime study of Willie Bosket, New York State's most notorious criminal and considered to be their most violent and dangerous prison inmate. On the other hand it's a study of the origins of violence in America.
Amazingly, the author was able to trace Willie Bosket's ancestry back to his slave ancestors, and in so doing trace the escalating evolution of violence and criminality in each succeeding generation of the Bosket family. The book begins in pre-Revolutionary times with a study of white violence in the region of North Carolina where Willie's ancestors were enslaved. The author persuasively argues that the primary origin of black violence is the tradition of white violence that was transferred to them from their former slave owners.
For those who want to delve even deeper into the origins of this same tradition of violence as it existed with the Scotch-Irish in England and imported by immigrants to America's Southern Highlands in the 17th Century, see "Albion's Seed."
If you saw Zell Miller's keynote address to the Republican Convention, and/or his subsequent interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, you saw a perfect example of this tradition of Southern Highlander violence.
This book is a definite page-turner!
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