The Great Michigan Read 2011-2012 is drawing to a close. This year's selection has inspired displays and discussions across the states in public libraries and schools. The author, Kevin Boyle, received his undergraduate degree from University of Detroit-Mercy and his doctorate from University of Michigan. He is presently teaching at Ohio State University. Arc of Justice won the National Book Award in 2004 and was named Michigan Notable Book in 2005.

Arc of justice: a saga of race, civil rights, and murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle — the story of a Detroit physician of African-American descent, his family, and trying to move up in the world. The consequences of purchasing a home in a Detroit, middle-class neighborhood in 1925 by Dr. Sweet were terrifying and not a shining moment in Detroit's history.

If you have read Kevin Boyle's Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, the 2011-2012 Great Michigan Read try David Halberstram or Branch Taylor or one of the many documentaries about Civil Rights in America produced over the years.

Faith in the city: preaching radical social change in Detroit by Angela D. Dillard; with a foreword by Charles G. Adams

Race and remembrance: a memoir by Arthur L. Johnson

Sweet land of liberty: the forgotten struggle for civil rights in the North by Thomas J. Sugrue

The children by David Halberstam