The decade that changed America

Beyond the parties, Mr Boyle traces the racial reckoning as it coursed through the nation

THE SHATTERING: America in the 1960s

Author: Kevin Boyle

Publisher: WW Norton

Price: $32 

Pages: 480

Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford walked alone through the crowd of jeering whites. She hadn’t heard about the escorts assigned to the nine Black youngsters integrating Little Rock’s Central High School because her family had no telephone. So Elizabeth took the city bus, filed past the screeching adults, went up to the guardsmen who blocked her way with raised bayonets, turned around, returned to the bus stop, sat down and tried not to cry as the mob around her kept screaming. It was 1957 and Americans were about to plunge into