Rating: 
Summary: Try a closer view
Review: If you read this book, you must read All Souls : A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald. It gives a necessary perspective on a community rarely described with accuracy. It brings greater truth to the troubled times in Boston than the Lukas book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Brialliant Work
Review: Lukas manages to present three views of the tumultuous events in Boston in the 1960s without placing value judgements upon the viewpoints himself. He simply tells the story as it happened by presenting each family's view -- a poor black family's, a poor white family's, and an upper class white family's -- of the situation as it appeared to them at the time. His book presents a window into the hearts and minds of the people that made the story; it is a rare treat.
Rating:
Summary: A Brialliant Work
Review: Lukas manages to present three views of the tumultuous events in Boston in the 1960s without placing value judgements upon the viewpoints himself. He simply tells the story as it happened by presenting each family's view -- a poor black family's, a poor white family's, and an upper class white family's -- of the situation as it appeared to them at the time. His book presents a window into the hearts and minds of the people that made the story; it is a rare treat.
Rating: 
Summary: Common Ground lacks Common Sense!
Review: The book: COMMON GROUND (c.1984) by J. Anthony Lukas, was poorly written, poorly researched, and is ponderous to read. It lacks footnotes, endnotes, and citations; a lot of its information cannot be verified by the historian; and has been refuted by some of the same families which the author supposedly interviewed. If a reader has no idea about forced busing in Boston, they still won't have any idea after reading COMMON GROUND. I began my senior year at South Boston High on September 12, 1974, the first day of forced busing in Boston; and spent my entire life in the city of Boston, particularly in areas during the time period mentioned in this work, and after reading COMMON GROUND three times I regard it as a piece of historical fiction. You cannot 'de-segregate' something that was never segregated, and the Boston public schools were never segregated! Its winning of the Pulitzer Prize shows how: 1.) the Pulitzer Prize commission has lowered its standard; and, 2.) how the commission kowtows to tendentiously written pieces of liberal propaganda. The book: COMMON GROUND conforms to both of these categories. The book operates on the presupposition of the infallibility of a court's decision, Morgan v. Hennigan, which was signed but not written or read by a federal judge. The author, like the judge, ignored contradictory evidence and the testimony of thousands of life-long neighborhood residents that there was no segregation, 'de facto' or 'de jure', in the Boston public schools. The author claimed to have spent six years in research yet all he can come up with is highly anecdotal information which would not hold up to critical inquiry; it contains unverifiable information which would make an intelligent reader question the veracity of the author's research; it is in error regarding riots since Boston has never had a single riot in its entire history (Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968 went virtually unnoticed in Boston - the Afro-American population had just reached only 6%); the author strangely or purposely ignored all other caucasian ethnic groups (Polish, Italian, Lithuanian, etc.) in Boston and focused primarily on the Irish American; and COMMON GROUND was made obsolete by its publication date (1984) when the Boston Public Schools achieved a reverse imbalance of 80-89% of Afro-American students attending mentioned schools due to white flight!! Yet forced busing is still happening in Boston to this very day. Yet the greatest omission of all in COMMON GROUND is that the author virtually ignored the most segregated and insulated of all of Boston's neighborhoods - Chinatown! The Chinese American was spared both the collectivization process as well as the color coding process! A book published in the same year which should be read in conjunction with J. Anthony Lukas is: THE BOSTON SCHOOL INTEGRATION DISPUTE: Social Change and Legal Manuevers(c.1984) by anthropologist J. Brian Sheehan, just to compare its information content, objectivity and superior historiographic handling of the same issues and events which shames COMMON GROUND.
The book COMMON GROUND, if one can get through it, should be read just for erudite readers to recognize the contrivance for which it is.
Rating:
Summary: The best nonfiction book I have ever read
Review: This book is a magnificant work -- the best work of nonfiction I have ever read. It captures the essence of the problems facing urban America in a compelling, meticulous story. It is about America, the world, race and racism, class and elitism, sociology, education, psychology -- it has it all. And it is breathtakingly entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: An account of issues still facing American cities.
Review: This is a wonderful book, important for the story it tells and the truths it bares. Having been reared in an Irish-Catholic family, the moods and feeling expressed by the McGoff family were very familiar to me. Further, the issue of race relations in our cities remains a relevant and disturbing problem. This book illustrates the struggles good and well meaning people face in striving for equality in daily life.
Rating:
Summary: A penetrating study of urban upheaval in 1960s-70s Boston.
Review: This is one of the finest books on anything I have ever read. Mr. Lukas captures the distinct qualities of three widely divergent families in Boston, illuminating their struggles to come to terms with the urban upheavals of the time and place. Local and national issues of family and race receive remarkably balanced treatment. A long book, but worth every word--absolutely magnificent
Rating:
Summary: current events raised to the level of art
Review: Though Common Ground is non-fiction it reads like great literature.So detailed and moving is the story of the families and individuals that Lukas traces, that while you read this involving and complex tale of idealistic politics and failed expectations, you end up caring deeply for all the people whose lives over two decades are being traced.If you were going to read one book to understand the state of race relations in the late 20th century this would be it.There are only a few books that I have read that made me want to meet the author and thank him for writing it.This is one of those.
| 
