Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful and detailed history
Review: As someone who has researched and studied the civil rights movement, I was impressed and moved by J. Mills Thornton's rich examination of how a movement that changed America sprang forth in three key cities - Montgomery, Alabama (my home town), Birmingham, and Selma. The famous dictum that 'all politics is local' has never read more true. What Thornton does is take the reader inside the world of local politics, re-introducing the readers to the importance of what may seem like small, local decissions, and how even one city commission election can change the course of history for a nation. This book stands with Carry Me Home, Parting the Waters, and Pillar of Fire as essential reading for those who truely want to understand our all too recent history of race, discrimination, and civil rights. While the text of the book is 583 pages (before notes and a detailed index), it is a worthy and enlightening read. Once read, I doubt anyone will miss voting in a local election again.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful and detailed history
Review: As someone who has researched and studied the civil rights movement, I was impressed and moved by J. Mills Thornton's rich examination of how a movement that changed America sprang forth in three key cities - Montgomery, Alabama (my home town), Birmingham, and Selma. The famous dictum that 'all politics is local' has never read more true. What Thornton does is take the reader inside the world of local politics, re-introducing the readers to the importance of what may seem like small, local decissions, and how even one city commission election can change the course of history for a nation. This book stands with Carry Me Home, Parting the Waters, and Pillar of Fire as essential reading for those who truely want to understand our all too recent history of race, discrimination, and civil rights. While the text of the book is 583 pages (before notes and a detailed index), it is a worthy and enlightening read. Once read, I doubt anyone will miss voting in a local election again.

Rating:
Summary: an important but ponderous tome
Review: Professor Thornton has done many years of important research. DIVIDING LINES will continue to provide an important source for scholars and a significant analysis of the civil rights movement in three important Alabama commmunities. But it's a little bit like cooking a fabulous meal for one's guests and tossing it into the back yard, i.e. there is such a lack of attention to presentation that the revelations and research can't be expected to reach many people. This is not such a complicated book that it could not have been written for people to read. And it is too long. It needed a real editor.