I would like to propose that we select Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools for the 07-08 Community Book Project.  I have taught this book several times and have always found it to be compelling, thought-provoking, and informative; colleagues who have used the text in the classroom have reported similar experiences.  I have always found that students respond especially well to it.  It is highly readable as it includes a sequence of narratives about Kozol’s visits to a variety of public schools in difference cities and suburbs, each including interviews with students.  It also breaks up easily into sections if need be, has been available in paperback for several years so shouldn’t be too expensive, and at 262 pages, it isn’t excessively long.  
The topic of inequity in our public schools is something that relates well to the lives of our students as they can see the evidence themselves in and around Baltimore.  Also, the book focuses on issues of race and class in powerful ways which make it relevant to many different courses.  It would easily fit into history, English, economics, education, criminal justice, sociology, psychology, and political science courses as well as all diversity courses.  It also would be useful in environmental science courses (there is a significant chapter about the relationship between sewage, public utilities, and the physical disintegration of the public schools in East St. Louis) and statistics courses, as the entire book is a statistical study of student success rates, disparities in school funding, and enrollment, retention, and graduation figures.  
In addition, Kozol is a national expert on issues of education and equity.  His books are numerous and are often taught in education programs at colleges and universities across the country.  He is an excellent speaker with years of actual experience working in our public schools.  His most recent book, Shame of the Nation, is a best seller about the ways in which our schools have resegregated themselves and today look much the way they did before Brown vs. Board of Education.  Hearing him speak about these important issues would be a significant learning experience for all of us.  
    One potential down side to having Kozol be the author of the year is that he is, like Tim O’Brien, a white male; certainly, diversity in our authors would be an asset.  However, I think it is important to consider how central issues of race and diversity are to all of his work and how he has devoted his entire professional life to the advocacy of equity in our urban schools.  
I can envision many events being planned around this book: a panel of local educational professionals discussing issues of funding inequity, movies (perhaps Freedom Writers, Stand & Deliver, and/or Coach Carter), speakers (including Kozol himself), student panels, etc.  It would fit in perfectly with ethics week, as Kozol discusses the issue of educational inequity within an ethical framework, including discussions with students about the differences between schools.  In addition, the book is in itself entirely about Closing the Gap.   
Savage Inequalities is in many ways the perfect book for the Community Book Project.  Besides being a good fit in the obvious but important areas of cost, size, and accessibility, it has the enormous advantage of being about an issue that is of central importance to all of our lives, to the mission of the College, and without being too hyperbolic, to the future of the nation.  Kozol advocates, over and over again, for real equal education opportunity, and even more importantly, he offers cogent arguments for ways to achieve that goal.   

Reviews:
“Startling and compelling .... Crucial to any serious debate on the current state of American education.” (Publishers Weekly,)

“An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children.” (New York Times Book Review)

“This book digs so deeply into the tragedy of the American system of public education that it wrenches the reader's psyche .... A must-read for every parent, every educator, and every relevant policy maker. “ (Alex Haley, author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X)

“A superb, heart-wrenching portrait of the resolute injustice which decimates so many of America's urban schools.” (David Garrow, author of Bearing the Cross )

"I was unprepared for the horror and shame I felt .... Savage Inequalities is a savage indictment.... Everyone should read this important book.” (Robert Wilson, USA Today)

From Publishers Weekly
Kozol believes that children from poor families are cheated out of a future by grossly underequipped, understaffed and underfunded schools in U.S. inner cities and less affluent suburbs. The schools he visited between 1988 and 1990--in burnt-out Camden, N.J., Washington, D.C., New York's South Bronx, Chicago's South Side, San Antonio, Tex., and East St. Louis, Mo., awash in toxic fumes--were "95 to 99 percent nonwhite." Kozol ( Death at an Early Age ) found that racial segregation has intensified since 1954. Even in the suburbs, he charges, the slotting of minority children into lower "tracks" sets up a differential, two-tier system that diminishes poor children's horizons and aspirations. He lets the pupils and teachers speak for themselves, uncovering "little islands of . . . energy and hope." This important, eye-opening report is a ringing indictment of the shameful neglect that has fostered a ghetto school system in America.

From Library Journal
In 1988, Kozol, author of Death at an Early Age and the more recent Rachel and Her Children visited schools in over 30 neighborhoods, including East St. Louis, Harlem, the Bronx, Chicago, Jersey City, and San Antonio. In this account, he concludes that real integration has seriously declined and education for minorities and the poor has moved backwards by at least several decades. Shocked by the persistent segregation and bias in poorer neighborhoods, Kozol describes the garrison-like campuses located in high-crime areas, which often lack the most basic needs. Rooms with no heat, few supplies or texts, labs with no equipment or running water, sewer backups, fumes, and overwhelming fiscal shortages combine to create an appalling scene. This is raw stuff. Recommended for all libraries.