All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence

Fox Butterfield

Vintage Books, 2008 - Social Science - 389 pages

A timely reissue of Fox Butterfield's masterpiece, All God's Children, a searing examination of the caustic cumulative effect of racism and violence over 5 generations of black Americans.

Willie Bosket is a brilliant, violent man who began his criminal career at age five; his slaying of two subway riders at fifteen led to the passage of the first law in the nation allowing teenagers to be tried as adults. Butterfield traces the Bosket family back to their days as South Carolina slaves and documents how Willie is the culmination of generations of neglect, cruelty, discrimination and brutality directed at black Americans. From the terrifying scourge of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction to the brutal streets of 1970s New York, this is an unforgettable examination of the painful roots of violence and racism in America.

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Pretear - LibraryThing

[All God's Children] was a text assigned to me in a university course called "The History of Violence in the United States." While I was completely enthralled by the lectures, at the time I only ...

ALL GOD'S CHILDREN: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence

User Review  - Kirkus

A dispiriting history of transgenerational violence and its victims, by a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist. The Bosket family has lived in the US for as long as there has been an American nation ...

Contents

• BLOODY EDGEFIELD: 3
• MASTERS AND SLAVES: 19
• AARON After Freedom: 35
• PUD Dont Step on My Reputation: 46
• JAMES AND BUTCH Coming Up in the Terry: 71
• BUTCH The Promised Land: 88
• BUTCH The Pawnshop: 110
• WILLIE Bad Little Booby: 131
• WILLIE Little Man: 150
• CHApter to WILLIE The Boy No One Could Help: 176
• WILLIE The BabyFace Killer: 204
• CHAPTER I2 BUTCH The Prisoner and the Scholar: 251
• WILLIE Counsel for the Defense: 263
• BUTCH Free at Last: 283
• EPILOGUE: 325
• A NoTE ON SOURCES: 332
• Acknowled GMENTs: 374

About the author

Fox Butterfield is the author of China: Alive in the Bitter Sea, which won the National Book Award. He was a member of the New York Times reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its publication of the Pentagon Papers, and has served as a correspondent for the newspaper in Boston, Washington, DC, New York, South Vietnam, Japan, Hong Kong, and China--where he opened the Beijing bureau in 1979. He is currently a national correspondent for the NY Times, writing about crime and violence. He lives near Boston with his family.

Bibliographic information

• Title: All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence
• Author: Fox Butterfield
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Vintage Books, 2008
• ISBN: 0307280330, 9780307280336
• Length: 389 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Criminology