The Poisoned City, Anna Clark
The Poisoned City, Anna Clark
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The Poisoned City
Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy

Author: Anna Clark

Narrator: Xe Sands

Unabridged: 7 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/10/2018


Synopsis

Winner of The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism - 2019

When the people of Flint, Michigan, turned on their faucets in April 2014, the water pouring out was poisoned with lead and other toxins.

Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water supply to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint, mostly poor and African American, were not seen as credible, even in matters of their own lives.

It took eighteen months of activism by city residents and a band of dogged outsiders to force the state to admit that the water was poisonous. By that time, twelve people had died and Flint’s children had suffered irreparable harm. The long battle for accountability and a humane response to this man-made disaster has only just begun.

In Anna Clark's full account of this American tragedy, Anna Clark's The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making.

Places like Flint are set up to fail—and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.

About Anna Clark

Anna Clark is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, USA. She is the author of Desire: The History of European Sexuality (2008), Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution (2004) and The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (1995).


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nancy on May 20, 2018

A woman who was a high school classmate posted on Facebook about her work distributing bottled water in Flint, Michigan through the American Red Cross. Day after day people came for a case of water. The had to make daily trips because they were only allowed one case a day. The people needed an I.D.......more

Goodreads review by Clif on May 14, 2020

This is the story of an incredible breach of the public trust. It was a betrayal at multiple levels with racial overtones beginning with deterioration of the central city core as was typical of many industrial cities in the American Midwest. In the case of Flint, Michigan it was placed under "emerge......more


Quotes

"The tainted and harmful water supply of Flint, Michigan, did not happen accidentally. It resulted from an ongoing failure of individuals and institutions and reflects how our nation values some lives over others. To communicate such a blunt message, Xe Sands is the perfect narrator because her voice is smartly intimate. Her inviting tone comes through like a confidante's whisper and transforms the harsh issues that Clark highlights into a narrative that listeners will be ready to hear." -AudioFile


Awards

  • Helen Bernstein Book Award - Nominee
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • Washington Post Best Books of the Year
  • Seattle Times Best Books of the Year
  • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism