GARY M. POMERANTZ
“A magnificent piece of of writing, a beautiful tapestry of prose in which the stories of two of Atlanta's most celebrated families have been woven densley into the histiry of the city itself.”
-The New York Times
“Peachtree should stand as the definitive history of Atlanta’s turmoil and triumph from the Civil War until now.”
-USA TODAY
"Pomerantz has done a remarkable job of digging through the historical record -- delving into archives and stomping across graveyards -- to chronicle these two intriguing clans . . . Pomerantz’s dual family approach . . . provides a window on both the black and white communities through the city’s most racially tense days.”
-The Chicago Tribune
“Pomerantz is at his best in describing the strange and sometimes murderous relations between black and white in this century . . . This is a book with any Yankee’s dollar.”
-The Hartford Courant
“As a rich blend of dense research and fluid, engaging storytelling, this book is a remarkable achievement. Pomerantz, in the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas’ Common Ground and Nicholas Lemann’s The Promised Land, tells a sweeping, complex history through the lives of families with triumphs and tragedies of their own. In the balance between grand stories and small, he conveys a portrait of a city and a region that lives very much at the center of the South’s, and the nation’s, conscience."
-The Newark Star-Ledger
“There’s powerful history here and much humanity, too. This book is a flat-out joy to read.”
-The Calgary Herald
“A powerful and splendidly written story, impressively researched and energetically told. Pomerantz is sensitive to the remarkable families histories he’s uncovered, yet fair and tough-minded in his insider’s portrait of the making of modern Atlanta.”
-David J. Garrow, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
"Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn is more than a political and social history of Atlanta. It is a story of the South and the twentieth century . . . It is a genuine American story that any reader would find fascinating."
-The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A valuable distillation of larger drama, the birth of a New South.”
-The Washington Post Book World
“A finely drawn, epic history of Atlanta . . . Pomerantz has accumulated a formidable amount of research and deploys it expertly, rarely losing sight of his characters as they play out their unique destinies against the backdrop of history. An engrossing genealogical window on a remarkable city.”
-Kirkus Reviews
“It’s a work in love with history: carefully researched, powerfully written, rich with the pathos, tension, victories and bitterness of Atlanta’s actual past . . . Atlanta is not just a city of half-fake triumphalism. It’s also a place of subtleties and intelligence, of honesty and good sense, of sadness and grace – like Pomerantz’s book about it.”
-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“American history at its most accessible and readable – a rich and singularly human story.”
-David Halberstam
“Riveting in its narration, rich in its insights, and highly significant in what it reveals about ambition, hard work, success and race relations.”
-David Levering Lewis, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1886-1919
"For Southern white readers of a certain age, the book may contain -- perhaps not surprises, but recognitions: that black people can be as class conscious as whites; that even when we were young, educated and affluent black people likely lived not so far away from us -- something our parents could not then not have admitted; that the black aristocracy is distinguished indeed . . . [A] fine and rewarding book."
-The Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer
"This book is a must read. It tells the remarkable story of two families -- one black and one white. It depicts their almost unbelievable struggle. In their stories, you can see the dying of the Old South and the birth of the New South."
-Congressman John Lewis, Georgia
"Impeccably researched and compassionately told."
-BookPage
"A remarkably coherent view of the lives and times of the leaders whose actions and interactions, fraught with drama and peril, changed the face of the South and of the nation."
-Entertainment Weekly