The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781250125149)

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 the first 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.

Author: Anna Clark
ISBN-10: 1250125146
ISBN-13: 9781250125149
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Language: English
Published: 07/10/2018
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.60h x 6.00w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2017
Library Journal 06/01/2018 pg. 108
Kirkus Reviews 06/01/2018 pg. 62
Publishers Weekly 05/28/2018
Booklist 06/01/2018 pg. 7
BookPage 07/01/2018
Choice 01/01/2019