Anna Clark is a journalist living in Detroit. Her writing has appeared in ELLE Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, the Columbia Journalism Review, Next City, and other publications. Anna edited A Detroit Anthology, a Michigan Notable Book, and she had been a writer-in-residence in Detroit public schools as part of the InsideOut Literary Arts program. She has also been a Fulbright fellow in Nairobi, Kenya, and a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan. Her books include The Poisoned City and Literary Luminaries.
**Winner of the 2019 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism **Winner of
the 2019 Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award **Winner of the
2019 Gross Award for Literature **Finalist for the 2019 Helen
Bernstein Award for Excellence in Book Journalism
**Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in
Nonfiction (2019) **A Michigan Notable Book (2019)
"It's hard to overstate how important Anna Clark's new book is... A
taut, riveting and comprehensive account." --USA Today "An
exceptional work of journalism. Clark delivers a thorough account
of a still-evolving crisis, one with an unmistakable racial
subtext.... Her book is a deeply reported account of catastrophic
mismanagement. But it's also a celebration of civic engagement, a
tribute to those who are fighting back."--San Francisco Chronicle
"A comprehensive chronicle of the crisis with an eye for the
institutional corruption and indifference that enabled it."--The
New York Times "Clark writes powerfully about the environmental
consequences of a shrinking city, about how Flint's financial
decline drove the decision to switch drinking-water sources...
She's most effective describing the racism that shaped Flint."--The
New York Times Book Review "A meticulously annotated, brutally
honest, and compassionately narrated account of a disgraceful
American crisis... The Poisoned City is a cautionary tale for every
town and city across the land."--The Christian Science Monitor
"Gripping and packed with meticulously sourced reportage... Clark's
rich account intersperses policy and environmental science with
vivid portraits of Flint and its citizens, ramping up the tension
as the horror unfolds."--Nature "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 seems
to run as deeply and powerfully in this country as water
itself."--Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The
Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy "Anna Clark's book on
the Flint water crisis rises to a great challenge: it sacrifices
neither complexity nor moral clarity. And by etching this story's
outlines in decades of racist neglect, it is not just a splendid
work of journalism. It is a genuine contribution to history."--Rick
Perlstein, author of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and
the Rise of Reagan "The Poisoned City is a gripping account of a
devastating, unnatural disaster. Through deep research and
on-the-ground reporting, Anna Clark makes the case that Flint's
water crisis is the result of decades of disinvestment and neglect,
worsened by austerity policies and governmental malfeasance. This
is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America's
ongoing failure to deal with environmental injustice, racial
inequality, and economic marginalization."--Thomas J. Sugrue,
author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in
Postwar Detroit "The story of the Flint crisis is disturbing enough
even if one knows only a few details. But the entire case, as laid
out by Anna Clark, is enraging. Clark has sifted the layers of
politics, history, and myopic policy to chronicle the human costs
of this tragedy. Flint is not an outlier, it's a parable - one
whose implications matter not just to a single municipality but to
every city in the country and all who live in them."--Jelani Cobb,
Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism, Columbia University "The
poisoning of Flint was unintentional but it was no accident. Read
Anna Clark's empathetic yet emphatic history and you will
understand how this American tragedy could have been prevented -
and why it wasn't. Her book will make you mad, but it will also
give you hope for the rebirth of our cities and maybe even our
democracy."--Dan Fagin, author of Toms River: A Story of Science
and Salvation
Ask a Question About this Product More... |