All Souls

Globe Op-Ed: Remembering Rosemary Nelson, An Irish Champion of Human Rights
Gobe Op Ed re Youth Violence, Today’s Inauguration of Gov. Deval Patrick, and New Hopes for the Grass Roots
My Boston Globe Op Ed Piece re: “The Departed”
”Post Punk” by David Mehegan, Boston Globe Feature
To order my books online, please click the following links:
For Powells.com: Easter Rising All Souls
For Amazon.com: Easter Rising All Souls
For BarnesandNoble.com: Easter Rising All Souls
An incendiary, moving book that startles on nearly every page.... MacDonalds nimble prose and detailed recall of grim times long past make for luminous reading; his hard won conception of how ghettoized poverty spawns localized violence, and the dignity he brings to lives snuffed out in chaos, gives All Souls a moral urgency usually lacking in current memoir or crime prose. A remarkable work. -- KIRKUS (starred review)
All Souls is the written equivalent of an Irish Wake, where revelers dance and sing the dead persons praises. In that same style, the book leavens tragedy with dashes of humor but preserves the heartbreaking details. -- BRENT STAPLES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
If you were charmed by Frank McCourts Angelas Ashes ... try All Souls: A Family Story From Southie, Michael Patrick MacDonalds guileless and powerful memoir of precarious life and early death in Bostons Irish Ghetto. -- R.Z. SHEPHERD, TIME
This is an extraordinalry family story about an extraordinary place called Southie. It is a story of a young man climbing a mountain of violence, to emerge with love and hope. All Souls grasps your emotions from the first pages and wont let go. -- HOWARD ZINN, AUTHOR "A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES"
[A] rare and compelling book...Highly passionate.... A few pages of this book do more to demolish popular myths about American poverty than a years worth of most newspapers coverage of welfare reform, drug crime and government statistics. -- CHICAGO TRIBUNE
All Souls is a memoir filled with desperation and despair, but there is also hope in it...MacDonalds truthful account lacks any trace of ego-tripping, vengefulness, hidden agendas, or confessional wallowing. His discovery of his vocation in neighborhood activism is a refreshing change from most memoirs, which so often...are largely concerned with describing an ascent to celebrityhood. -- THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
MacDonald has a gift for narrative, an eye for social detail, and a voice of earned authenticity. -- JACK BEATTY, AUTHOR OF THE RASCAL KING
The cultural lessons [in All Souls] jump off the page, not just for scholars of poverty but for ordinary people, especially African Americans, as well. -- NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE'S EQUAL OPPORTUNITY JOURNAL
Irish Americans are discovering their own turbulent and rowdy history and the songs that go with it. Theyre throwing the overalls in Mrs. Murphys chowder and splashing Finnegan with whiskey to wake him. Michael Patrick MacDonald takes us on a heartbreaking tour of his South Boston family while William Kennedy guides us through the heart and soul of Albany. -- FRANK McCOURT ON IRISH AMERICA
All Souls hits with the power of a driven fist that crashes through the cynics intellectual defenses and leaves one speechless. -- SUNDAY BUSINESS POST (U.K. and Ireland)
MIchael Patrick MacDonald rips the cover off the myth that poverty and violence happen predominantly in the black community. His story of growing up poor and white in South Boston reminds me of my own in the South Bronx. This is an honest, piercing tale. Once you read it, you will never look at our country the same way again. -- GEOFFREY CANADA, AUTHOR OF FISTSTICKKNIFEGUN
Hes written the most honest portrayal of lost youth. -- DICKY BARRETT of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, US Weekly