The South Bronx is the poorest congressional district in the United
             States; it lies on one end of a New York Subway line that within minutes
             traverses the richest congressional district in the country. These Third
             World conditions right in the United States are what author Jonathan Kozol
             hopes to bring to light in his book Amazing Grace. Specifically, Kozol
             focuses on the children of the South Bronx, children who struggle to
             survive, thrive, to find joy and spiritual connections amid the turmoil of
             the ghetto. Although nihilism, hopelessness, anger, and violence run
             rampant through the neighborhood, the children with whom Kozol speaks and
             befriends exhibit an "amazing grace." Kozol writes, "There are children in
             the poorest, most abandoned places who, despite the miseries and poisons
             that the world has pumped into their lives," appear cheerful (6). Racial
             segregation is one of the root causes of the problems in the South Bronx,
             and Kozol treats this issue and its concurrent problems with poverty,
             drugs, and violence. To do so, the author interviews local police,
             teachers, and church pastors to form an accurate, holistic vision of the
             community and to discover possible solutions for the problems therein.
             Kozol allows the residents of the South Bronx to speak for themselves and
             to demonstrate with their own examples why racial segregation,
             ghettoization, gang violence, and poverty are symptoms of a national
             problem rooted in avarice and racism.
             Ironically, the "founding father" of the community, Richard Morris,
             built the South Bronx on profits gleaned from slavery: he had owned a
             plantation in the Caribbean. The local high school is named after Morris.
             The South Bronx can't seem to escape its historical roots: racism pervades
             the district and there is a sense that its residents still live as slaves.
             A local teenage girl tells Kozol that the outside, white-dominated world
             looks ...