We'll Take It from Here. Sarge is a ba-a-ad book.

Not white folks' conventional notion of bad—invidious, malevolent, and naughty. But black people's revision of bad—hip, together, and super-good.

In this brief but brilliant burlesque on busing (apologies to Spiro Agnew), Garry Trudeau has captured a quality which eluded thousands of newspaper articles, editorials, and television reels on Boston. He has reduced America's cancer of race hate to the essential sadness of its humanity.

Little innocent white Bobby Matthews and his streetwise black friend, Rufus, A. B. (after busing) are juvenile pawns caught up in an adult savagery that is as vibrant today as it was 113 years ago when Lincoln signed that piece of paper.

Bobby's other friend is National Guardsman Sgt. DeRosa, who sits next to him in class, not to help him learn, but to help him survive. (p. 91)

After 113 years of this combative...