Product Description

A timely reissue of Fox Butterfield’s masterpiece, All God’s Children, a searing examination of the caustic cumulative effect of racism and violence over 5 generations of black Americans.

Willie Bosket is a brilliant, violent man who began his criminal career at age five; his slaying of two subway riders at fifteen led to the passage of the first law in the nation allowing teenagers to be tried as adults. Butterfield traces the Bosket family back to their days as South Carolina slaves and documents how Willie is the culmination of generations of neglect, cruelty, discrimination and brutality directed at black Americans. From the terrifying scourge of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction to the brutal streets of 1970s New York, this is an unforgettable examination of the painful roots of violence and racism in America.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62783 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-08
• Released on: 2008-01-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.com
Willie Bosket was charming, magnetic, and brilliant. He was also the most cold-blooded criminal the New York State penal system had ever seen. By the time he was in his teens, he had committed over two hundred armed robberies and twenty-five stabbings. Fox Butterfield examines the heritage of violence that followed Bosket's family from their days in slavery in South Carolina to the present.

From Publishers Weekly
Through the history of an African American family, from slavery in South Carolina to its dissolution in contemporary Harlem, journalist Butterfield probes at the root causes of the cycle of violence.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In his early 30s, Willie James Bosket Jr., viewed by many as New York's most violent criminal, is confined in tightly secured isolation in a Catskill prison. New York Times reporter Butterfield interviewed Willie and did extensive research on him, his forebears, and the historic use in this country of violence in defense of personal honor. A high I.Q. and often appealing demeanor have not mitigated Willie's unrepentant, violently aggressive behavior. "The boy no one could help," he has been mostly institutionalized since age nine. His family life was abysmal: he never met his criminal father, his mother was a negative influence, and he inherited a history of law-flouting male aggression. Butterfield delineates the complex elements of this young African American's life gone irretrievably awry. Highly recommended for college level and up.
-?Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating
This book does a very good job in trying to explain some of the causes of violence and some of the systemic failures in our society. It also provides an interesting narrative of the people involved in the story.

this from a descendant of Capt James Butler
I am a descendant of James Butler. For the record, that family is not Scotch-Irish, they were English and had been for hundreds of years. They went to Virginia from England in the 1600's not because they were poor or down trodden but because they were wealthy and well connected with the intentions of making more money.

Shoddy research just makes me cringe.

Truly a 5-star read
On a cold wintry day in March 1978, Willie Bosket, a 15-year-old boy with an extensive juvenile record, shot and killed a middle-aged hospital worker in a New York City subway robbery. Eight days later, Willie robbed and killed another man under similar circumstances. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested, confessed, and was found guilty of these two homicides. He was given the maximum sentence for a juvenile of five years for the two murders. He felt not a whit of remorse for his actions, and was quoted as such in the papers.

A few days later, New York Governor Hugh Carey, reading about the trial in the New York newspapers, became so incensed that he immediately called a special session of the state legislature in Albany. He proposed and was successful in passing a new law in record time, the Juvenile Offender Act of 1978. This law allowed kids as young as 13 to be tried in adult criminal courts for murder and receive the same penalties as adults. This law was a sharp reversal of 150 years of American tradition. New York became the first of many states to make this watershed change in juvenile justice policy. Willie Bosket had made history.

If All God's Children were merely a harrowing recitation of the criminal life of Willie Bosket, it would be a fascinating chronicle of the "most dangerous prisoner in the history of the state of New York." But it is much more than that. It is also a multi-generational tale of the Bosket family dating back to 1834 in South Carolina. It in particular traces the interweaving stories of Willie Bosket and that of his father, Butch Bosket, with all that they held in common-genius-level IQs, a history of explosive anger, psychopathic tendencies and a conviction for two homicide.

In telling this saga of the Bosket family, Butterfield has successfully woven together a sociological treatise on violence in America, a cautionary tale of the pernicious effects of slavery, and a genealogical study of a truly tragic family.

Armchair Interviews says: A stunning read.