I am obsessed with the LA riots of 1992. I have been since they happened as a kid. I love the idea of bringing this history to young people and think it is really well done. I question a bit how some information was presented without interpretation or reflection from the adult (thinking here about the testimonies of the officers who beat King). But over all very comprehensive and well researched and something I look forward to giving my kids when they are old enough to read.

I lived through this, but I was far too young to remember it. This was such a great summation of what happened in 1992 in Los Angeles with so many connections made to today. When I used to teach history, I always taught it as a spectrum of one event leading to another to another. History doesn’t happen in a vacuum. This book is an excellent example of how to teach a historic event without making it seem isolated in the grand timeline of things. I also loved the use of primary sources and images to make the reader feel like it’s happening today. Because in a lot of ways, it is still happening today. I would recommend reading this along with John Cho’s Troublemaker.

Rising From the Ashes is an in depth look at all the people and influences leading up to the beating of Rodney King. We then get a detailed account of the aftermath: the violence, the destruction, and the deaths. In this book, readers learn what they missed from abbreviated and over simplified news reports. Getting to read about each person and their personal lives makes this event even more profound.

A telling of a sadly common and tragic pattern. Time marches on, but little progress seems to be made. Still this is a good resource for anyone wanting to learn about Rodney King and the LA Riots.

I assume that formatting issues will be fixed before publication.

Yoo's book builds on her successful previous book on the birth of the Asian American rights movement. I'm happy to have a book that puts the LA riots into perspective for young people, so they can more deeply understand the complexity of the events surrounding it. Yoo does a great job exploring all sides of this story. Her ability to provide personal narratives alongside larger ones is empathetic history at its best.
The book reads like great fiction, and I think it will pull in readers who are looking for something nonfiction but don't want to feel trapped by something too academic.

Yoo encourages readers to consider the connections between LA and today, as well as the underlying currents of racism that stretch from LA to now (the book even discusses the Watts riot, which students understand even less today. Her discussion of it is top notch and really accessible for younger people). However, I never gained the sense that she came across as preachy; instead, she many times subtly gets readers to question the relevance of the story from thirty years ago.

In being so comprehensive, the book could benefit from a few storylines being condensed. While I think the pop culture and rap music is important to the context, it detracts from the book's larger narrative.

Overall, I think that students who are interested in this time period, who want to know about the origins and views of this event would benefit from this book. There's been a wealth of documentaries about this in the last few years, and I think the book could be used to continue someone's interest in it, providing a way to continue some syntopical reading.