What: Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Live of Three American Families, J. Anthony Lukas’s 1985 chronicle of the breakdown of hallowed traditions in the wake of mandatory desegregation in Boston:
Why: Understanding Boston requires seeing it through the prism of its most violent change, the period of the late 1960s and the 1970s. This was when Lukas, a Pulitzer-winning reporter at the New York Times, realized the limits of his medium and left the paper. After books about the Chicago Seven and Watergate, Lukas turned his eye toward Boston, a city being transformed by court-ordered busing across racial lines. To humanize a complex issue, Lukas spent seven years recording the thoughts of three families: the black Twymons, the Yankee Divers, and the Irish McGoffs. Common Ground starts with these families in their segregated boxes, and watches them grow and collapse like a Life simulation. Some build bridges, others grab lead pipes, still others bolt for the hills. Little people are trammeled under by a big gamble, with children as the collateral. By the end, the world is a different place, and no one is unaffected. Especially not the reader.
Impact: Common Ground brought Lukas his second Pulitzer, a National Book Award, an American Book Award, a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and many others. The Washington Post called it “the best book ever written about an American city.” It’s required reading in journalism schools, especially at Columbia, where the university’s prestigious journalism prize is named for Lukas. The book made Lukas the greatest journalist of his generation. This was a mantle he couldn’t bear. He suffered debilitative depression starting shortly after the book took off, and killed himself in 1997 at the age of 64. It’s a shame, because we could sure use him now.
Personal Connection: I lean perilously close to hero-worship here. As a journalism student at Northwestern and an investigative reporter of some merit later on, I viewed Lukas as everything I wanted to be as a journalist. I met Lukas for a few minutes after a talk he gave at Northwestern. He signed my copy of Common Ground. It doesn’t leave my house.
Other Contenders: Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone, the eco-thriller of how Ebola became the nastiest stuff on Earth; American Apocalypse: The Great Fire and the Myth of Chicago, Ross Miller’s account of all that was and then quickly wasn’t in the Windy City; Longitude, Dava Sobel’s gripping narrative about the development of a working water clock; Charlie Wilson’s War, George Crile’s riotous depiction of the maverick congressman who took down the Soviet Union.
