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Common Ground
- A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 35 hrs and 29 mins
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Publisher's summary
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and the American Book Award, the best-selling Common Ground is much more than the story of the busing crisis in Boston as told through the experiences of three families. As Studs Terkel remarked, it's "gripping, indelible...a truth about all large American cities."
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Little mention of accountability of the people getting the housing
- By Steve D Renz on 05-15-18
By: Ben Austen
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You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
- A Personal History of Our Times
- By: Howard Zinn
- Narrated by: David Strathairn
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, tells his personal stories about more than 30 years of fighting for social change, from teaching at Spelman College to recent protests against war. A former bombardier in World War II, Zinn emerged in the civil rights movement as a powerful voice for justice. Although he's a fierce critic, he gives us reason to hope that by learning from history and engaging politically, we can make a difference in the world.
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mind blowing
- By WILLIAM on 11-27-19
By: Howard Zinn
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Blood Done Sign My Name
- A True Story
- By: Timothy B. Tyson
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old Black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets. While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and Black Vietnam veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses.
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This Is A Very Good Book
- By Caleb on 03-22-05
By: Timothy B. Tyson
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City of Scoundrels
- The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
- By: Gary Krist
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World". But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city’s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place.
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Great History of a Great City
- By Cookie on 08-30-12
By: Gary Krist
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Once in a Great City
- A Detroit Story
- By: David Maraniss
- Narrated by: David Maraniss
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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It's 1963, and Detroit is on top of the world. The city's leaders are among the most visionary in America. It was the American auto makers' best year; the revolution in music and politics was underway. Walter Reuther's UAW had helped lift the middle class. Once in a Great City shows that the shadows of collapse were evident even then. Yet so much of what Detroit gave America lasts.
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Great read
- By Jordanel on 01-02-16
By: David Maraniss
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A Few Red Drops
- The Chicago Race Riot of 1919
- By: Claire Hartfield
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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On a hot day in July 1919, five black youths went swimming in Lake Michigan, unintentionally floating close to the white beach. An angry white man began throwing stones at the boys, striking and killing one. Racial conflict on the beach erupted into days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations. This mesmerizing narrative draws on contemporary accounts as it traces the roots of the explosion that had been building for decades in race relations, politics, business, and clashes of culture.
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Excellent book!
- By Eric Leafblad on 06-03-18
By: Claire Hartfield
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Freedom Summer
- The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy
- By: Bruce Watson
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1964, with the civil rights movement stalled, seven hundred college students descended on Mississippi to register black voters, teach in Freedom Schools, and live in sharecroppers' shacks. But by the time their first night in the state had ended, three volunteers were dead, black churches had burned, and America had a new definition of freedom.
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The Long Hot Summer
- By Roy on 08-01-10
By: Bruce Watson
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The Gay Revolution
- The Story of the Struggle
- By: Lillian Faderman
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 29 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The Gay Revolution begins in the 1950s, when law classified gays and lesbians as criminals, the psychiatric profession saw them as mentally ill, the churches saw them as sinners, and society victimized them with irrational hatred. Against this dark backdrop, a few brave people began to fight back, paving the way for the revolutionary changes of the 1960s and beyond.
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An outstanding book.
- By David Farley on 10-21-15
By: Lillian Faderman
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White Flight
- Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
- By: Kevin M. Kruse
- Narrated by: Aaron Williamson
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In this reappraisal of racial politics in modern America, Kevin Kruse explains the causes and consequences of "white flight" in Atlanta and elsewhere. Seeking to understand segregationists on their own terms, White Flight moves past simple stereotypes to explore the meaning of white resistance. In the end, Kruse finds that segregationist resistance, which failed to stop the civil rights movement, nevertheless managed to preserve the world of segregation and even perfect it in subtler and stronger forms.
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Local history is important
- By Adam Shields on 10-02-19
By: Kevin M. Kruse
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The Crusades of Cesar Chavez
- A Biography
- By: Miriam Pawel
- Narrated by: Jackson Gutierrez
- Length: 21 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the first comprehensive biography of Chavez, Miriam Pawel offers a searching yet empathetic portrayal. Chavez emerges here as a visionary figure with tragic flaws; a brilliant strategist who sometimes stumbled; and a canny, streetwise organizer whose pragmatism was often at odds with his elusive, soaring dreams.
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Cesar Chávez
- By Ed on 09-10-18
By: Miriam Pawel
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My Life, My Love, My Legacy
- By: Coretta Scott King, Barbara Reynolds
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, Phylicia Rashad
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The life story of Coretta Scott King - wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and singular 20th-century American civil rights activist - as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to one of her closest friends. Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising Black parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose.
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Inspirational memoir
- By Jean on 01-30-17
By: Coretta Scott King, and others
What listeners say about Common Ground
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- Anonymous User
- 09-04-23
A Masterpiece
I went to a catholic school in Boston graduating in 1976. It was the height of busing. 35 years ago I read this book and only just noticed there was an Audible version. With much excitement I downloaded it and went ‘on a journey’. The writing was beautiful and the research was unbelievably thorough. The reader Eric Michael Summerer hit every note perfectly and thankfully didn’t do the Boston accent. Lukas showed where society was at that time and didn’t hold back on the truth. It was hard to do anything but listen to the story and almost impossible to put down. I can’t recommend it enough.
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- DB1089
- 11-10-19
"And that little girl...was me!"
Came to this hoping to understand Kamala Harris' sick burn of Joe Biden over the busing issue. Left hearing more about the history and politics of Boston than I cared for. Meticulously researched and David-Halberstam-without-the-punchy-portraits well level written. But there is so much detail at times that the issue it foregrounds is hard to make out. Still the best book I have read on busing, but it's more a heaping slice-of-life than it is a work on policy.
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1 person found this helpful
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- FYFM
- 02-03-19
great overview of ethnic sociopolitical background
...of Boston and perhaps the US. Very thorough and thoughtful. As a liberal I found this book challenging in terms of the limits of government intervention.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Stevie
- 02-12-20
Rich historic context, choppy structure,
The historic, cultural and judicial context of the story is rich and puts the presentation of the events so they unfolded to the public at the time in perspective. The structure of the tale as it's told here is choppy and far too verbose and after hours of listening I could not finish listening to the book. I do not like this narrator. Why does he feel it necessary to raise his voice pointedly when reading quoted text. his intimation at those times is not consistent with the tone of the speaker.
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- Aaron Edwards
- 08-05-23
I will be more grateful with each subsequent read
I grow up a child of this time and place and space-time. Which is to say 77. Never bussed. Always back of a bicycle. so this book is boring and hard to slog and so important and clear and will improve as i can process and stomach it is mind numbing i blame myself blanket across the board but will read reread
I can calibrate for discomfort from trauma enough to know that this is it important bucket I am grateful for the subject matter it’s 100% the best book ever written on the subject and unfortunately there’s just not it’s not enough I can’t be all that we produce about this we need her story we need their story we need to come out this from how much steel was used to make these passes the factories textile out toward law for 95 military bases when I enlisted to go to Iraq after 9/11 I left them I don’t remember. Honestly, I think the Bedford medford i dont know ny mind cant access noun retrieval for such a tssk anymore i aged only -> 9/11 but my mind is older.
Book brilliant to base in real stories and people we need books to be done from the children and grandchikdren of this books generation for #methree #yotambien #moiausi perspectives pauli murray taught at brandeis before this but
Phone about to die so am going to push this to caveat emptor
I am about to lose my electricity thing whatever this is called anyway, I hope you enjoyed whatever this was going to be and will be once I get around to revising and rereading editing so please just these are not the droids you’re looking for.
Notes and unedited:
🔪🥦🥦🥦🥦🥦🥦
Whoopie Goldberg jumpin jack flash trading places look at that s car go
This is the best book available, but that should tell you less about the book and more that we really need to rise to the level of this book and its professionalism and its awareness of the importance of tying all this to stories of interviews people researched it’s really a master class and Robert Caro Whatever that whole school of authors that I generally don’t enjoy but treasure with all my heart in humble gratitude
and books and books and books and books and more books
a book like this is so well done and deserving of any and all prize because it’s a rallying point that we can all tell our own and became a synapse snapping perspecuity her story because I’m part of this book
I am i be born ct. but boston after mom bounces. Connecticut but raised around Boston common charles river closed sundays so no cars and slow bicycles walking to the store Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School at 9pm lamplight goodnight moon goodnight shortcuts to get your mom cigarettes. Handels messiah. Fenway Fanuel fawkin fairies
. all kids in waves melrose rt 1 oak grove orange line boston ballet capelia wang theater outward toward Worcester 495 corridor danvers prison obviously being from Boston, I could continue going on what we lack in quality we make up for in quantity
50% of the people swiped left 50% or shaking their head saying not that guy stuff from Boston but they wouldn’t use a nice word like gay in Boston that’s the thing I grew up in a time when it was no trigger warning, sticks, and stones may break my bones, but words will cripple me for decades, so we learn to give we learn to take.
This is my story. I’m learning to be gracious to the generations that could be for us, but this is been a difficult read. Still not done only halfway through your ask me where I am in any book it always be halfway through.
I don’t tell people I’m from Boston with pride I do it just because it’s starts with a B and I contract. I have to be from B Pl. beginning with a B.
I am just a sensitive soul and I take all the blame for everything upon me so having to take the blame for these stupid white Irish Solis, disgusting stupid, ignorant, barbaric, disappointing, discouraging, pale, ginger bread red headed souless tiny, titty limp dick again I’m from Boston so I can go on, but I just don’t like people from Austin and I don’t like white people in general but I definitely don’t like White Bostonians. Obviously being white and being from being from a part of the world that I can tell you I am 16% from this region in Ireland I am 31% from this region in Wales 11% from this area in England .
I know this is a long review but that book was a long book. This is my way of processing it. size of the matter. You should know that you’re from Austin.
I just came down to this planet, or passed through after this happened cause this definitely had to happen and be taken care of and looks like this are always hard for me because there’s no one I dislike more than people from Boston and there’s nobody more ready and able and willing and capable and of helping me survive and get by after 9/11. And my sister and three red hats for Red Sox nieces. We’re looking at that 54th Regiment Black when they are dead cracker I don’t know what the weather was like that day I don’t I wasn’t there, but they were.
about where I was from and people reading. This will be there want more or will have swiped left long ago
around au bon pain and tmnt and punk kids and ringe and latin mlk yom kpr harvard law at night street bike boston ballet wang center born in usa brandeis post pauli present anita city on a hill waltham voyage of the nimi b4 nemo buikt by black blood bought for black ark international branch boston strong 54th black 54th colored if that doesnt place you right now in front of the commons with so many blacks i for 95 and end of orange line
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- LoftyQuilts
- 07-09-21
Don’t Bother
This book is B. O. R. I. N. G. The delivery is dry. The characters are not presented with any personality
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2 people found this helpful