Customer Reviews

Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy (Princeton Studies in American Politics)

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Most books from the Ivory Tower about community organizers tend to leave out the human side of things. Instead, Warren makes such efforts come alive on a human level. Not only does he capture the challenges the group faces, he captures the story. He lets the organizers speak directly to the reader. As more and more of the nation's big cities become "majority minority," we will need books like this one that address head-on thorny issues of cross-racial cooperation. Bottom line: it's a very entertaining read.

My professor used this book for a civic engagement class. The book examines a model of mobilizing citizens to achieve a common good. While it discusses using a religious foundation to define common moral good and how the church is an inevitable base for community organizing in the poorest neighborhoods in the United States, it also realizes the limitations of religion. Also, the organization examined in Dry Bones Rattling, IAF, attempted to bridge social capital based on a model of only bridging racial differences. Warren effectively demonstrates that it is futile to bridge solely along racial lines and limit the societal battle only against racism because concerns about education, economic issues and healthcare are other problems that our society faces.