Land of Opportunity, William Adler
Land of Opportunity, William Adler
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Land of Opportunity
One Family's Quest for the American Dream in the Age of Crack

Author: William Adler

Narrator: Todd McLaren

Unabridged: 15 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/11/2021


Synopsis

Part true crime, part work of urban sociology, Land of Opportunity is a meticulously researched account of the rise and fall of the Chambers brothers, who ran a multi-million-dollar crack cocaine operation in Detroit in the 1980s.

Descended from Arkansas sharecroppers, BJ, Larry, and Willie Chambers moved to Detroit seeking economic opportunity, and built a successful drug empire by applying strict business principles to their trade; their business grossed an estimated $55 million annually until the brothers were sent to prison in 1989. Reading the Chambers brothers in the context of the fall of the Detroit auto-industry and its impact on the city's economy and residents, Land of Opportunity demonstrates how for the Chambers brothers, crack dealing was a rational career choice; and through the Chambers brothers' story, Adler provides bottom-up history of late Second Great Migration, deindustrialization, the War on Drugs, and crack era in both Detroit and the United States.

About William Adler

William M. Adler is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and the Texas Observer. In addition to Land of Opportunity, he has written two other books of narrative nonfiction: Mollie's Job, which follows the flight of a single factory job from the US to Mexico over the course of fifty years; and The Man Who Never Died, a biography of the labor martyr Joe Hill.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ian

Adler's Land of Opportunity is an astonishing piece of journalism, disguised as an incredible narrative. It's easy to see, once he puts the pieces together, how the earliest crack kingpins can be seen sympathetically. He also sources all of his material in exhausting detail at the end of the book, p......more

Goodreads review by Michael

I didn’t appreciate the focus on police involvement.......more

Goodreads review by Chris

Excellent narrative of the rise of the Chambers brothers and the introduction of crack into Detroit in the 1980s. Alder does an fine job of explaining the backstory not only of the family's roots, but the area they grew up and the cultural and social histories. Against this backdrop, it makes things......more