12) Waiting for a Miracle: Why Schools Can't Solve Our Problems-And How We Can, James Comer, Hardcover, E P Dutton, 1997.
Comer is not only a child psychiatrist who directs the Yale University Child Study Center School Development Program, but also a pioneer who remains a leading figure in modern school reform. In this book, he discusses the causes of several persistent problems in K-12 education and presents a viable approach to resolving them — an approach that focuses on the crucial roles of children, family, and community.

13) America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, by Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, Hardcover, Simon & Schuster, 1997; Paperback, Touchstone Books, 1999. 
Written by Harvard history professor Stephan Thernstrom and his wife, Abigail, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, this book concludes that race-conscious affirmative action policies are a failure.

14) Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males, Freeman A. Hrabowski, Kenneth I. Maton, Geoffrey L. Greif, and Maton Greif Hrabowski, Hardcover, Oxford Univ. Press, 1998.
Today's young Black men are more likely to be killed or sent to prison than graduate from college. But Hrabowski leads a team of scholars who eloquently describe how many African American families are raising academically successful sons.

15) The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, William G. Bowen and Derek Curtis Bok, 1998 Princeton University Press.
This latest salvo in the debate over affirmative action, written by two former Ivy League presidents, documents how race-sensitive admissions policies at selective colleges helped African Americans get ahead and benefited society as a whole.                                                                        
—Compiled by Michele N-K Collison