Bombingham

This is not a simple book. At first it seems like a Young Adult novel but the ideas, the emotions, the storytelling style is very sophisticated and mature. A younger reader might enjoy it for the historical importance but this book is finely nuanced. I would have enjoyed reading this in class or a b......more

Very emotional. Very telling of the time when the black population of Birmingham was struggling with integration. The chain of hopelessness black people felt from generation to generation seems to continue even after the end of the book. Great, educational, and a must-read book for the Civil Rights......more

Review_Bombingham_AnthonyGrooms. 304 pages. Five stars. Grooms takes a political situation, the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham in the sixties, and infuses it with a wrenching coming-of-age story expanding well beyond the Movement in Birmingham to include Vietnam, cancer, religion’s role in fata......more

I'm sure I'm supposed to be wowed, but I was not. The tedious writing robbed the story of its power. That the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was delivered in such an offhand manner made it feel far less significant, rather than the galvanizing event it was. For all the praise given,......more

Excellent and harrowing account of life in pre-civil rights Birmingham from the standpoint of an 11-year-old boy in the midst of family trauma, jumping ahead to the boy as a young man in Vietnam. The prose is a little uneven at times, but the overall message of humanity and determination against the......more