RaveThe Washington PostA professor of history at Northwestern University, Boyle draws on a wide range of important historical scholarship produced over the last 20 or so years on topics like the Black freedom movement, modern political history and U.S. empire ... Boyle has a gift for synthesizing and translating the often dry arguments and analysis of formal scholarship (my own included) into artful and empathetic storytelling ... Through vivid and poignant descriptions, the reader sees the tragedy of the Vietnam War through the eyes of 21-year-old helicopter pilot James Farley, weeping over the body of a fellow soldier, and the Kent State shooting from the perspective of the father of one of the slain students. Boyle also plumbs the diaries of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to offer glimpses of their interior worlds. This approach does more than just lessen the distance between presidents and ordinary Americans, it also reveals how the issues of civil rights, Vietnam and sexual freedom, which are usually told on different planes, affected politicians and people like the Cahills who experienced the events firsthand or watched them on nightly news broadcasts ... What distinguishes The Shattering is not only the way it deepens the portrait of the past, but also how it foreshadows the politics of the future ... Boyle is restrained in drawing too many parallels between the 1960s and the present. He need not struggle to do so. The events and issues outlined in The Shattering defined not just the 1960s but our own times as well. By shining a spotlight on racial justice, a forever war and reproductive freedom in the past, Boyle offers important lessons for the present and the future.
James F. Simon
RaveThe Washington Post\"What is perhaps most striking is that, with the exception of a few veiled comments in news conferences and oblique statements in their memoirs, Eisenhower and Warren kept their frustrations with each other private ... His efforts to probe Eisenhower and Warren’s relationship reveal that their differences were often more of approach than ends and represented a debate over immediate vs. incremental change ... His efforts to probe Eisenhower and Warren’s relationship reveal that their differences were often more of approach than ends and represented a debate over immediate vs. incremental change ... Simon’s veneration of Warren also creates some noticeable blind spots ... Simon’s book offers a glimmer of hope that the court can and will once again take a stand. For, as Warren’s example makes clear, such a position is not only constitutional but also morally and ethically right, and will allow the justices to join Warren on the right side of history.\
