The Poisoned City Flints Water And The American Urban Tragedy Anna Clark by Anna Clark 9781250125149, 1250125146 instant download after payment.

The first full account of the Flint, Michigan, water scandal, an American tragedy, with new details, from Anna Clark, the award-winning Michigan journalist who has covered the story from its beginnings

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 to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint—a largely poor African American city of about 100,000 people—were not seen as credible, even in matters of their own lives.

It took 18 months of activism and a band of dogged outsiders to force the state to admit that the water was poisonous. But this was only after 12 people died and Flint's children suffered irreparable harm. The long battle for accountability and a humane response to this man-made disaster have only just begun.

In the first full-length account of this epic failure, 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. Cities like Flint are set up to fail—and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences may be mortal.

“An arresting and copiously documented saga of moneyed corruption... A
bracing, closely reported chronicle... Clark ably pieces together the
grotesque convergence of forces that transformed Flint into a byword of
failed oversight and artificially induced hazard. And she rightly notes
that the water crisis, as sudden and unexpected as it might have seemed,
was the culmination of more than a generation’s worth of systemic
neglect and cynical austerity-minded pillaging from on high.” ―Bookforum
“Searing
scrutiny... Riveting... A sobering read through all the spin and cover
ups... A cornucopia of history and responsibly researched details... I
have yet to encounter a more thorough, accurate or readable account of
the poisoning of Flint’s municipal water supply than The Poisoned City. This is an important book, for Flint, for all American cities, and for our nation.” ―East Village Magazine, Flint, Michigan

“Incisive
and informed... In the first full accounting of the Flint water crisis,
Clark combines a staggering amount of research and several intimate
story lines to reveal how the Michigan city was poisoned by its leaders
and then largely abandoned to its fate by state officials.... Clark
takes no prisoners, naming all the names and presenting the confirming
research. ‘Neglect,’ she warns, ‘is not a passive force in American
cities, but an aggressive one.’” ―Booklist (starred review)

“A
complex, exquisitely detailed account... A potent cautionary tale of
urban neglect and indifference... Clark goes far beyond the immediate
crisis―captured nationally in images of bottled water being distributed
to Flint’s poor, the most severely affected―to explain ‘decades of
negligence’ that had mired the city in ‘debt, dysfunctional urban
policy, disappearing investment, disintegrating infrastructure, and a
compromised democratic process.’ She warns that other declining American
cities are similarly threatened.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Compelling...
A comprehensive account [that] boils down this complex tragedy... While
devastating, this account is also inspiring in its coverage of the role
of Flint’s ‘lionhearted residents’ and their grassroots activism,
community organizing, and independent investigation... This extremely
informative work gives an authoritative account of a true American urban
tragedy that still continues.” ―Publishers Weekly

“With
every heartbreaking detail, Anna Clark’s must-read and beautifully
rendered account of the Flint water crisis makes clear that this
horrific poisoning of an essential American city was never just an
unfortunate accident. Instead, it was the tragic, and indeed tragically
inevitable, result of the fiscal, as well as environmental, racism that