The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly gifted observer he was even as a child: "[as if] we were protected, as if the whole neighborhood was watching our backs for threats, watching for all the enemies we could never really define."But...

An "alternately funny and heartbreaking" memoir of leaving—and finding—home, by the author of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie ( Newsweek).In All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald told the story of the loss of four of his siblings to the violence, poverty, and gangsterism of Irish South Boston. In Easter Rising, he tells the story of how he got out.Desperate to avoid the "normal" life of Southie, Michael first reinve...

The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly gifted observer he was even as a child: "[as if] we were protected, as if the whole neighborhood was watching our backs for threats, watching for all the enemies we could never really define."But...

Nonfiction storytelling is at its best in this anthology of excerpts from memoirs by thirty authors—some eminent, some less well known—who grew up tough and talented in working-class America. Their stories, selected from literary memoirs published between 1982 and 2014, cover episodes from childhood to young adulthood within a spectrum of life-changing experiences. Although diverse ethnically, racially, geographically, and in sexual orientation, these writers share a youthful precocity and...

A coming-of-age story about surviving trauma and finding purpose through Boston’s punk rock scene of the 1970s to New York City and beyond, from the bestselling author of All SoulsIn All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald chronicled a heartbreaking saga of familial loss amid Irish South Boston's culture of silence. In Easter Rising, he tells the story of how he managed to survive it.Finding refuge in the city's burgeoning undergroun...

A coming-of-age story about surviving trauma and finding purpose through Boston’s punk rock scene of the 1970s to New York City and beyond, from the bestselling author of All SoulsIn All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald chronicled a heartbreaking saga of familial loss amid Irish South Boston's culture of silence. In Easter Rising, he tells the story of how he managed to survive it.Finding refuge in the city's burgeoning undergroun...

More Alternative Truths is an exploration of the potential consequences of today’s politics in our daily lives. More than our individual lives, but our American identity.This exploration defines this anthology. So many of the stories ask what has America become? What will it be in the future? Will it devolve into a Russian style oligarchy, or will we rise to the challenge and use our hearts, our minds and our votes to return to a rational democracy, of, by, and for the people. No o...