In The Crucible of Desegregation: The Uncertain Search for Educational Equality (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Boston College political scientist R. Shep Melnick examines the evolution of federal school desegregation policy from 1954—when the Supreme Court delivered the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education—through the termination of desegregation orders in the first decades of the 21st century. Combining legal analysis with a focus on institutional relations, Melnick argues that years of ambiguous, inconsistent, and meandering Court decisions left lower court judges adrift, forced to apply contradictory Supreme Court precedents in a wide variety of highly charged political and educational contexts. As a result, he contends, desegregation policy has been a patchwork, with lower court judges playing a crucial role and with little opportunity to analyze what worked and what didn’t. The Crucible of Desegregation reveals persistent patterns and disagreements that continue to roil education policy. Melnick is the Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Professor of American Politics at Boston College and author of The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education, Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights, and Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act.