Lori Latrice Martin is associate professor of sociology and African and African American studies at Louisiana State University.

• Chapter 1: Public Schools and Pathways to Prosperity Chapter 2: History of Race and Public Education in America Chapter 3: Education as a Profit Machine Chapter 4: Race, Public Education and the Wal-Mart Model Chapter 5: Education and Today’s Black Working-Class: Low Quality, Low Prices, Low Wages Chapter 6: Does Common Core Make Common Sense? Chapter 7: Plutocracies the Displacement of Indigenous Organizations and Educational Leaders Chapter 8: Fighting Back: Changing Trajectory of Public Education in America Chapter 9: Worth the Fight

Martin, as others before her, urges closer consideration of the collateral damage of privatizing tendencies. The questions she asks about privatizing effects on community cohesion are important, as is her candid treatment of how race matters in privatization in general and in education specifically…. The big box of privatization is wide and deep, and its contents are typically off limits to the general public. Scholarship that pries the box open and helps us see the contents for what they are (not just how they are advertised) remains important. Big Box Schools moves us a step forward in this direction.