You would not believe it - but this book is as captivating as some detective or adventure novel. the difference is that instead of digging for gold or looking for long-lost treasures in some Andes, these people are real people, with real lives, and families and jobs - and they are fighting for an ideal that they all believe in.
It just so happens to that this ideal is not that of love, or honor or dignity or anything of the sort, it is not even that of money being th ultimate good as in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" - it is simply that of not building an Interstate highway in a haphazard manner of not taking into considerations people's homes and ways of existing.
People fight for it just as others were fighting in the French revolution, and that didn't happen in some 17** Paris, but in the late 1960's, here in the United States - in Boston in fact.

Written from the remove of an all-white suburb of Winthrop, Massachusetts, the book: 'LIBERTY'S CHOSEN HOME: The Politics of Violence in Boston' (c. 1977) by journalist Alan Lupo, is less of a scholarly inquiry into the violent aspects of Boston's history and more of an anti-South Boston political polemic.

The author exhibited a Marxist monomania throughout his work demonstrated by this statement on page 154, that: "Forces born more than a century before had clashed repeatedly, and now they were giving shape and substance to the ultimate battles of class warfare" as the left-wing determinist explanation for the vehement protest against court ordered forced busing in 1974 by concerned Boston neighborhood families.

By suggesting that the vehement protests against forced busing in 1974 by assimilated Irish Americans (and many others) in South Boston were a direct extension of the violent strikes by Irish Immigrants in the 1854 North End (Boston), the author had committed both an historical and logical error by suggesting that cities and people demonstrate "Timeless Qualities". In this, Alan Lupo 'Begs the Question' - he assumed the accuracy in his own statements without proof.

The lack of proof, 'ipse dixit', is the hallmark of this pretentious phillipic as non-sequiturs follow non-sequiturs to support unsubstantiated allegations. Among Alan Lupo's numerous dogmatic claims that are supposed to be consumed on their own 'a priori' is that: "The black street violence of today is as viscious as was the Irish brand a century ago." (p. 16) But how did the author know that? - He made no attempt to document his source.

The contribution to Boston's 'Mytho-history' by Alan Lupo can be found on page thirty, as the author related the excited outburst of an anti-forced busing protester in 1974 to then Mayor Kevin White that: "No matter how poor we were, Kevin, we always had clean lace curtains on our windows." And through sheer hyperbole, this exclamation from a non-Irish woman found its way into another polemic as the long established Boston tradition of the 'Lace Curtain Irish'. ('LIBERTY'S CHOSEN HOME (c. 1977) should be read in tandem with the screed 'COMMON GROUND' (c. 1984) for adroit readers to recognize their clone-like similarities.)

The author, Alan Lupo, really does not have any insights into South Boston that are not truisms ("The strengthening of voluntary busing programs made more sense than forced busing." p. 111); pointless facts ("Southie is a peninsula." p. 5); 'ad hominem' attacks ("It [South Boston] is, in fact, a white ghetto." p. 5); or well-poisoning ("A couple of alleged syndicate figures were in the room ... Nobody realized that day how important that segment of Boston society would become in the busing crisis." p. 171); and coupled with his constant use of vague generalizations ("Time made Patriots of wharf rats and brawlers." p. 10); plus three chapters of digressions, to promulgate a tenebrous theory of historical determinism.

All the author had to do was check with the Boston City Record to find out that in the summer of 1974 there were 240 Afro-American families living in South Boston; including a small colony of MicMac Indians from the Canadian Maritimes; not to mention that the Irish-American in South Boston were a vocal minority out numbered by Lithuanians, Polish, Italians, Estonians, Latvians, Albanians, Greeks, and Czeckoslavakians, to accurately show that South Boston was not 'all white'. Also, that the most segregated and insulated of all Boston neighborhoods was Chinatown, not Charlestown! Mysteriously the Chinese-American was fortuitously spared both the color coding process as well as the collectivization process inflicted upon their caucasian neighbors!

The writing of History, as "the critical examination of source material into a synthesis of an explanation that will stand the test of critical methodology", is absent in LIBERTY"S CHOSEN HOME, as the author manipulated his information, from the safety of his suburb of Winthrop, Massachusetts, to comply with his historically determinant system.

No responsible researcher would use LIBERTY"S CHOSEN HOME as source material for an intelligent analysis of forced busing in Boston because of its constant comparison of two disassociate historical events throughout the book. This author had espoused such a tendentiously written tract of Marxist dialectic it is not surprising that LIBERTY'S CHOSEN HOME is out of print. Yet Alan Lupo's book still contains some merit as an example of 1970s leftist propaganda before the 1990 self-destruction of communism and the world recognition of Marxism as a psuedo-scientific cult.

For the most accurate examination of South Boston residents, please read: 'THAT OLD GANG OF MINE: A History of South Boston' (c. 1991) by Frank J. Loftus Jr., for the truest look at a tightly knitted community.

Lupo, a seasoned reporter for the Boston Globe, delivers us a bookbook on busing with a forthright no nonsence appeal. WhileLupo does have a slant towards the left, he offers an excellent historical, social and economic discussion of what actually took place in Boston during the seventies a must for academics concerned with desegragation and readers looking for fresh insight on an ever present issue

"Liberty's Chosen Home" is a thorough and well-balanced treatment of the politics of violence in Boston. Using the busing crisis of the 1970's as his central theme, Lupo elucidates some of the various ethnic conflicts which have plagued Boston since its founding. Lupo's status as a prominent journalist and a political insider allows him to provide the reader with a unique, firsthand view of the events he details. In addition, his familiarity with the vagaries of Boston politics enables him to draw remarkable character sketches of the players in these same events. For example, his analyses of Mayor Kevin White's upbringing and administration are penetrating. In fact, these discussions of White are more insightful than those in the far more celebrated, "Common Ground" by Anthony J. Lukas. While this latter book has garnered a great deal of attention for its wide scope, Lupo's book is no less an achievement. Highly Recommended.