Book excerpt: Ruby was six years old when it began. She came, by chance, to be the only Negro child entering one of the previously segregated schools in New Orleans. For weeks, angry whites mounted a boycott protesting her presence. Each day, accompanied to the door by her mother, Ruby walked past a threatening mob to school. She heard obscenities, insults and from one white woman the particularly fearful threat of death by food poisoning. How can a child of six survive such an ordeal? What lends ordinary people like Ruby, her parents, and the parents of the other children who accompanied her the courage and endurance to outface a mob? What prompts a grown woman to threaten the life of a small child? The author spent years in the South seeking answers to such questions. The case cited above is one of more than twenty explored in this book. The result is a work that demonstrates how psychiatric and psychoanalytic concepts can be applied carefully and relevantly to complicated political and historical issues.--adapted from publisher's description.