Easter Rising (2006)

Michael Patrick MacDonald is yet another guy whose life was changed by the Clash. The working-class heroes and other punk bands like Public Image Ltd. helped MacDonald survive South Boston's Irish ghetto in the early '80s — he sneaked into concerts instead of plunging into the drug-and-gang culture that killed two of his 10 siblings. ''It felt a lot better to be pissed off than to be sad,'' he writes in Easter Rising, a follow-up to All Souls, his acclaimed 1999 family memoir. Here, MacDonald's focus on his teenage music rebellion eventually reaches a natural limit, allowing him to return to colorful tales about his immigrant grandpa and accordion-playing ma.