In her 2001 essay in the Journal of American History, Jill Lepore explains the difference between biography and microhistory. While the former, she suggests, focusses on the historical significance of a single life, the latter excavates an individual to illuminate broader social, cultural, and political transformations. This distinction nicely encapsulates John P. Spencer's methodological approach in his study of Marcus Foster, the first black school superintendent of Oakland, California. In the Crossfire does an exemplary job of narrating Foster's educational and occupational trajectory, first as student in the Jim Crow South, then as a teacher and principal in Philadelphia, and finally as an administrator in Oakland. Yet Spencer accomplishes so much more than this. While he grounds his analysis in the singular life of one man, Spencer expertly utilizes Foster to tell a much larger story about the “troubled history” of urban education, equality, and school reform in the postwar period. Specifically, he asks, why did liberals seize upon schooling to eradicate white racism and urban poverty in the 1960s and why did that consensus disintegrate in less than two decades' time?

Those familiar with Foster customarily know more about his death than about his life. Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army – a fringe group implicated in the kidnapping of publishing heiress Patty Hearst – assassinated him in 1973. While Spencer acknowledges that he, too, discovered Foster via his demise, he grew far more interested in Foster's life than in his death. Born in 1923 and raised by a single mother who embraced the Washingtonian ideal of uplift through education, Foster escaped poverty through schooling. As an educator, Foster became more measured in his belief that schools by themselves could dismantle systemic racial and economic inequality. Despite social reformers' long-standing faith in the transformative power of public education, Foster struggled to free his own students from their social and economic circumstances. As an administrator, however, he pushed back against those who sought to use students' personal challenges to explain the persistent failure of urban schools. He insisted that teachers be held accountable for their students' academic outcomes. In this way, Spencer argues, Foster presaged both the accountability movement epitomized by No Child Left Behind and the “No Excuses” charter schools made famous by the Knowledge Is Power Program and Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone. Yet Foster did not ask educators to ensure students' academic success on their own. He expected parents, taxpayers, and businesspeople to all lend a hand.

In the Crossfire is as much the story of Marcus Foster as it is a history of social policy. Spencer pays particular attention to two enduring questions that have vexed policymakers throughout the postwar period: what accounts for African Americans' persistent academic underachievement relative to their white peers and how might reformers harness the power of public education to eradicate urban poverty? On both these questions, Spencer, like Foster, seeks out a middle ground. In Foster, he argues, one can see both the allure of liberals' enduring faith in public schooling as the “great equalizer” and the dangers of relying too much on a single institution to solve complex social and economic problems. Spencer clearly sympathizes with those who claim that “overpromising for education … tends to obscure those root causes and breed disillusionment with schools and/or with the families they serve” (93). He argues that policy experts and education reformers alike have erred by putting too great an onus on schools to the exclusion of other forms of social welfare, including employment, health care, and housing. “Ultimately,” Spencer contends, “schools and their students were shaped by larger social and economic forces that no educator, no matter how talented, hard working and effective … could transcend on his or her own” (3).

But far from being polemical, Spencer advances these points methodically through a nuanced, reflective, and compassionate portrayal of Foster. In the Crossfire is thoughtfully argued and exceptionally well researched. Spencer draws from a wide array of sources, including oral interviews, policy briefs, newspapers, and school archives. Along the way, he spirits his readers through several key debates in postwar social and education policy: compensatory education, cultural deprivation, community control, and accountability. For this reason, this volume will be of great interest to both historians and policymakers alike, particularly those who seek to understand how public education can – and cannot – help to eliminate urban poverty. Spencer echoes what Foster articulated several decades ago. Teachers cannot eliminate inequality all on their own. Yet urban schools, even those that serve the poorest of students, can nonetheless be excellent. To expect anything less is to fail the nation's most vulnerable citizens.