"Part jeremiad, part gripping crime thriller,"* Don't Shootis David M. Kennedy's chronicle of his decades-long crusade to solve one of America's most pressing and shameful social problems. Kennedy, who engineered the "Boston Miracle" in the 1990s, cutting youth homicide by two-thirds at the height of the crack epidemic, reveals the history and the strategy behind his commonsense yet revolutionary approach to ending crime. He has refined an approach in which everyonegang members, drug dealers, cops, and neighborscomes together in a giant community meeting, an intervention and an affirmation of a shared desire for safety and peace. The proof is in the miraculous results. Don't Shootoffers a bold way forward in combating one of our country's most intractable social problems. (* Boston Globe)