Educating African American Males: Voices from the Field edited by Olatokunbo S. Fashola. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2005. 320 pp. ISBN 1-412-91433-7. Much has been written about African American male student achievement and its relationship to the achievement gap phenomenon (Perry, Stelle, & Hilliard, 2003; Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2003; Hrabrowksi, 1998; Ogbu, 1998; Patterson, 2006; Polite & Davis, 1999; Duncan, 1999; Freeman, 1999). Researchers and media outlets are quick to elaborate on reasons why African Americans are consistently falling behind their white counterparts. Many offer narrow assertions about African American male student achievement from either an historical, sociological, or economical lens when determining school success or failure. Conversely, empirical and mixed-methodological approaches have not been given adequate attention in helping to further the conversation about providing effective solutions toward closing the achievement gap of African American male students and countering deficit-model approaches. In Educating African American Males: Voices from the Field, Olatokunbo S. Fashola and several other prominent educational researchers boldly address this issue. The text is divided into eight chapters, situating itself within several thematic spaces including social, cultural, and historical issues; school reform; early, middle, and high school experiences; structural critiques of masculinity; institutional forms of racism; and extra-curricular activities that help to promote positive self-esteem and critical thinking for African American males. Collectively, the contributors articulate the need for new approaches by challenging the educational community to move beyond traditional measures of achievement and to understand the significance of social, historical, cultural, behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and pedagogical approaches which contribute to widening the achievement gap between African American males and their counterparts. Social and Historical Context of Schooling Experiences for African American Male Student Achievement Robert Cooper and Will Jordan’s “Cultural Issues in Comprehensive School Reform,” the book’s opening chapter, addresses African American male student achievement by tracing and examining both the historical and systematic effects of racism and by showing how institutionalized oppression plays a large role in widening the achievement gap. The authors strategically and impressively analyze factors such as rampant unemployment, poverty, and inadequate access to health care as potential factors for African American males being disenfranchised within the context of school and society. The authors suggest that there is an