Countless newspaper and magazine articles, academic studies, and popular books...have explored these issues ... Broke...stands apart from the rest by focusing on one misguided policy response and the resulting devastating consequences ... Kirshner...is admirably equipped to examine the often misunderstood concept of an entire city going broke, and she proves herself an adept guide to this complex situation ... Kirshner provides plenty of statistics, which demonstrate with acuity the interconnectedness of income and housing inequality, urban fiscal policy, population decline, and tax-base erosion. But the heart of this book is her powerful human-interest stories, which are likely to have the most significant impact on readers. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews, Kirshner brings us an unforgettable cast of characters ... In telling these stories, Kirshner is clear about her desire to expose the myth of the American dream ... While bankruptcy protection might seem like a simple solution for economically depressed cities, Kirshner is clear in her belief that this is not the answer.

Kirshner, a research professor at New York University, has taught bankruptcy law, and one wishes for more of the cleareyed analysis that appears in her prologue and epilogue ... Kirshner understands better than most how bankruptcy is a tool, one she argues public officials should not mistake for a solution ... In showcasing people who are persistent, clever, flawed, loving, struggling and full of contradictions, Broke affirms why it’s worth solving the hardest problems in our most challenging cities in the first place.

Jodie Adams Kirshner...comprehends the complex and far reaching effects of bankruptcy ... Her interviews with Miles, Charles, Robin, Reggie, Cindy, Joe, and Lola move the book out of academia into the real drama and voices of those most involved. Interspersing these colorful and often intimate interviews with history and legal explanation, allows her writing to shine and the readers to care. Here is how she introduces one of her chief sources ... Her writing cuts to the bone yet enlivens the telling. Without teaching or preaching Kirshner shares a world that cannot be denied ... This is a book is worth reading for its essential story as well as its eloquence of style.

Kirshner’s humane focus on individual stories illuminates underreported problems with housing, employment, and transportation. She calls for job creation, improvements to education and public transit, and support for entrepreneurs—reforms that could be paid for by reducing tax subsidies to private businesses whose building projects and job creation generally don’t benefit city residents ... With a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson, this book is an important read for policymakers and urban dwellers, locally and nationally.

Among the insights Broke offers, the most salient is that the vast majority of Detroit’s urban poor lead a precarious existence ... While these snapshots provide readers an emotional connection to Kirshner’s subjects, the author buttresses her points with statistics that reveal Detroit’s dire realities ... Broke is not an optimistic book, but it makes a strong case for caring about the fates of the resilient citizens of Detroit, and not just because we sympathize with their plight.

In her new book, Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises, Jodie Adams Kirshner pulls back the curtain on the Detroit Renaissance to reveal an alternate African-American universe. In the other Detroit, she writes, the overwhelmingly black majority inhabits a city crippled by government dysfunction and pockets of intractable poverty ... An academic and bankruptcy lawyer, Kirshner isn’t a natural storyteller — her prose is a bit stilted, and the book feels overpopulated. Reggie, Charles and Miles, three middle-aged black men fighting destitution and bad luck, blurred together; fewer characters would help readers get to know and care about each one. Ultimately, though, her characters are somewhat secondary to Kirshner’s goal — sounding the alarm about America’s cities

Kirshner is masterful at explaining the predatory banking and insurance industry practices that have led to impoverishment across the entire city (except for the white establishment downtown), the heartlessness of white politicians (mostly Republicans) who seemingly operate from racist viewpoints, a judicial system that offers little justice for the poor, and bankruptcy law, which was never meant to be applied to city governments. Although immersed in the lives of her protagonists, the author wisely keeps a low profile within her eye-opening and sometimes heartbreaking narrative, which ends with a brief call to action ... A significant work of social sciences and urban studies.

Kirshner convincingly argues that the bankruptcy saved the city, but failed to make a measurable difference in the lives of the vast majority of people who live there. This is a valuable cautionary tale.