In the passion of the civil rights campaigns of 1964 and 1965, Jonathan Kozol moved from Harvard Square into a poor black neighborhood of Boston and became a fourth grade teacher in the Boston Public Schools. He devoted the subsequent four decades to issues of education and social justice in America.
 
“Today’s most eloquent spokesman for America’s disenfranchised.” 
– The Chicago Sun-Times
 
Jonathan Kozol has written over 10 best selling & award winning books, including. . .
Death at an Early Age, his first non-fiction book is a description of his first year as a teacher in the Boston Public Schools. It was published in 1967 and received the 1968 National Book Award in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. It has sold more than two million copies in the United States and Europe.

Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America, received the Robert F. Kennedy Book award for 1989 and the Conscience in Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and Savage Inequalities, which won the New England Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
 
In a front page-review, The Washington Post described one of his books, Amazing Grace, as "devastating" in its portrayals but "as good as a blessing" in its tribute to the courage of the mothers of the poor.  Amazing Grace has since joined Savage Inequalities and Death at an Early Age as required reading at most universities and is part of the curriculum for future teachers and religious leaders.
 
His most recent book, Shame of the Nation, he has written with deep respect and empathy for our embattled teachers and filled with the voices of some of the most revered and trusted leaders in the black community.  It is a triumph of firsthand reporting that pays tribute to those undefeated educators that persist against the odds.  In their place, this passionate narrative offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.