Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (1985) is an engaging history of the busing crisis in Boston written by J. Anthony Lukas. Focusing on three typical families who have very different relationships to the controversy, Lukas shows the complicated politics of the situation and also allows the readers to feel for those with whom they may disagree.

The Bluest Eye (1970), Toni Morrison's first novel, tells the story of a young black girl growing up in Depression-era Ohio who believes that if she had blue eyes she would be happy. Morrison explores themes of beauty and self respect in a white-dominated culture.

Song of Solomon (1977), another novel by Toni Morrison, traces a young man's struggle for cultural identity against the backdrop of a tragic and magical family history and the shifting racial climate of the mid-twentieth...