A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year

By almost all measures, Kansas City's Central High School is just another failing inner-city school--with abysmal test scores, only one in three graduate. Cross-X is the riveting story of Central's championship debate team. As the students and their coach face formidable opponents from elite prep schools, they must also battle bureaucrats who seem maddeningly determined to hold them back, friends and family who are mired in poverty and drug addiction, and--perhaps most daunting--their own self-destructive choices. It is a gripping story about the essential nature of debate in any democratic society, and how through argument, retort, and wit, ideals survive even under the most difficult conditions.