Common Ground

A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families

By: J. Anthony Lukas

Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer

Length: 35 hrs and 29 mins

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."

©1985 J. Anthony Lukas (P)2018 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A huge and marvelous work." (Kai Erikson, The New York Times Book Review)

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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

Don’t Bother

This book is B. O. R. I. N. G. The delivery is dry. The characters are not presented with any personality