AUDIOBOOK
About
The story of the movement to desegregate Bostons public schools through busingand the backlash that followed.
In 1974, a federal judge ruled that Bostons public schools were unconstitutionally segregated. The solution? A controversial experiment in desegregation known as busing, which would take children from majority-white schools and bus them to predominantly Black schools, and vice versa. What followed was a year of upheaval, violence, and fierce protests, as Boston became a battleground for the heated national debate over school integration and racism in the North.
In this dramatic audiobook full of surprising twists and fascinating characters, journalist Leon Neyfakh (co-creator of the podcasts Slow Burn and Fiasco) unpacks the history of busing in Boston and brings to life the human stories behind the headlines by talking to the people who saw what happened with their own eyes. Combining historical analysis with firsthand accounts, Fiasco explores not only the impact of busing in Boston, but the larger questions about race, politics, and the struggle for equal education that continue to reverberate in America half a century later.
For a list of books, articles, and documentaries used to research Fiasco: The Battle for Boston, please visit bit.ly/fiascoboston.
Fiasco: The Battle for Boston was hosted and produced by Leon Neyfakh for Prologue Projects. The executive producer was Andrew Parsons, with reporting and production by Sam Graham-Felsen, Madeline Kaplan, Ula Kulpa, and Soraya Shockley.
In 1974, a federal judge ruled that Bostons public schools were unconstitutionally segregated. The solution? A controversial experiment in desegregation known as busing, which would take children from majority-white schools and bus them to predominantly Black schools, and vice versa. What followed was a year of upheaval, violence, and fierce protests, as Boston became a battleground for the heated national debate over school integration and racism in the North.
In this dramatic audiobook full of surprising twists and fascinating characters, journalist Leon Neyfakh (co-creator of the podcasts Slow Burn and Fiasco) unpacks the history of busing in Boston and brings to life the human stories behind the headlines by talking to the people who saw what happened with their own eyes. Combining historical analysis with firsthand accounts, Fiasco explores not only the impact of busing in Boston, but the larger questions about race, politics, and the struggle for equal education that continue to reverberate in America half a century later.
For a list of books, articles, and documentaries used to research Fiasco: The Battle for Boston, please visit bit.ly/fiascoboston.
Fiasco: The Battle for Boston was hosted and produced by Leon Neyfakh for Prologue Projects. The executive producer was Andrew Parsons, with reporting and production by Sam Graham-Felsen, Madeline Kaplan, Ula Kulpa, and Soraya Shockley.
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Reviews
"Neyfakh's audiobook is an engrossing document on the nature of systemic segregation and the challenges inherent in addressing the problem. In Boston, the move to desegregate schools in the early 1970s focused around a key approach: bussing Black students to predominantly white districts and requiring white students to travel to school districts that were predominantly Black. The conflict was immediate and sustained, and the result was a deeply-rooted negative public perception on "school bussing," despite documented benefits. Originally a limited-series podcast, the production employs existing interview clips to thread the story, including with politicians, protesters, and community members. The impact is often emotional and completely informative.
A devastating audiobook that captures an important piece of the post-Civil Rights era."
AudioFile