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| Author: Kevin Boyle
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy Used: $0.55
You Save: $25.45 (98%)
New (35) Used (79) Collectible (2) from $0.55
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 341435
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 0805071458
Dewey Decimal Number: 345.73025230977434
EAN: 9780805071450
ASIN: 0805071458
Publication Date: September 7, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Hard to fathom... December 24, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
It was hard to believe that this story actually happened in the Northern United States in the 1920s. And yet, it did. This is definitely not a topic that was covered in American history classes! The book covers the early history of Dr. Ossian Sweet, and the history that leads to the mob-inspired riot led by the block association. The book also touches, briefly, on the beginnings of the NAACP and some of the civil rights issues. We may hope things have changed, but have they?
 Couldn't Put it Down December 20, 2005
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Arc of Justice starts out riveting and just gets better. I found myself thinking again and again, "this couldn't have happened" only to read the end notes and be astonished at the depth of research behind every word. The book started me on so many Google quests to find out more about Clarence Darrow, the NAACP, the AME church and other historical people, groups, and events that touched the lives of the people involved in this incident.
The reach back into the family history of the Sweet family is a deftly painted portrait of an African-American family striving for the American dream and could have been a book itself. I can't say enough about this book and have recommended to all my friends, history buffs and fiction lovers alike.
American Classic October 7, 2005
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
1925 was a boom year in America, perhaps nowhere more so than in Detroit. But it was also a time of great struggle for Blacks in America, a time of lynching, of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and even of the burning of entire towns and neighborhoods, such as the famous Rosewood incident.
Author Kevin Boyle captures this moment superbly telling the story of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a Howard educated sharecropper's son. In a story essential to the understanding of the American dream in practical terms Sweet rises to defend his newly purchased home from a mob. This defense results in a fatality among the gathered throng and the stage is set for trial.
Clarence Darrow is most famous for his Scopes Evolution trial in Tennesse (which, btw, he lost). This trial more important to understanding what America, was, is, and will be than Scopes, by far.
Although there are certainly many Lawyers who have enforced racism it was also attorneys like Darrow who ended it, perhaps even at the expense of the tried. But in this case Darrow is victorious, though perhaps the book does suffer a bit at overly glorifying his actions and his profession.
Words fail me August 30, 2005
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I could heap praise on this book for days, and not reach bottom. It's a fine, fine read, and utterly fascinating. I particularly appreciate the shades of grey Boyle draws from the broad sweep of historical characters that tell this story. Ossian Sweet was an unlikely hero, and profoundly flawed. I thought I knew Clarence Darrow - far from it.
It would make a great movie, and it's already a great book.
A Pivotal Moment, Well Told June 23, 2005
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Kevin Boyle, in Arc of Justice, is very adept at creating a picture of a particular time and place, Detroit in the 1920s, that was the creation of the era that came before it and the harbinger of times to come. In 1925 a man, Ossian Sweet, is on trial for defending his property after moving into a white neighbourhood and he is defended by one of the most controversial men of his times, Clarence Darrow, but within this story are many strands stretching all across the country entangling many other vivid (and vividly portrayed) personalities. The author is amazingly effective in bringing into focus this complex story and the reader will be gripped by this true tale as both the KKK and the NAACP drift by. It is an intense, powerful read that shows, in many ways, how we got to where we are and how we have not gone as far as was once dreamed. That could be just some of Clarence Darrow's pessimism creeping in but it is hard not to be gripped by any encounter with that man, partiularly as well done as the one in this book. A very good piece of history.
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