In this meticulously annotated, brutally honest (she names names), and compassionately narrated account of a disgraceful American crisis, The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy takes us from point A to point Z, showing and telling and explaining all that happened through the words of those who lived it.... a cautionary tale for every town and city across the land. Clark’s admonishments of 'the toxic legacy of segregation, secession, redlining, and rebranding' that disproportionately victimized low-income and minority groups and of the government officials who repeatedly said, 'Trust us' should be taken quite seriously, as well as her assertion that '[a]gencies charged with protecting public health and natural resources deserve to be well-funded, pro-active, and oriented solely toward serving the public interest.'
The Poisoned City is [dry] but a comprehensive chronicle of the crisis—with an eye for the institutional corruption and indifference that enabled it ... [an] important book... useful—as history and as blueprint ... Opportunities to use these blueprints will never stop presenting themselves.
The Poisoned City, by journalist Anna Clark, is 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 ... [Clark's book] is a must-read—not only for those interested in environmental science and policymaking, but for anyone who believes that access to clean drinking water is a basic human right.
She makes her case not only through meticulously documented research—endnotes and a bibliography account for about a quarter of the book’s length—but by explicitly documenting how this sort of thing happens, using Flint as a sort of case study ... At least in part, then, The Poisoned City is a hearty defense of the Fourth Estate.
Riveting ... [Clark's] narrative digs deep ... The book’s comprehensive investigative journalism is impressive. The account is loaded with detailed documentation ... And Clark’s narrative voice makes the research come alive like the ongoing story it is ... The Poisoned City offers a sobering read through all the spin and cover ups ... Anna Clark’s The Poisoned City backs the good doctor’s play on the issue. A cornucopia of history and responsibly researched details is at the core of Clark’s work ... This is an important book, for Flint, for all American cities, and for our nation.
For better or worse, there are no clear villains in The Poisoned City, by Anna Clark. A journalist based in Detroit, Clark takes a broader, more measured approach to the Flint crisis ... She is a smart, hard-working reporter who knows she has a great tale to tell, and if the narrative gets lost in bureaucratic minutiae at times (who knew that Genesee County had a drain commissioner?), it’s easy to forgive because you admire her passion and her sweat ... Clark is particularly good at describing the importance of infrastructure in a functioning democracy ... 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.
The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy is an exceptional work of journalism ... 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 against governmental malpractice.
The Poisoned City by journalist Anna Clark provides the first thorough account of the saga and positions it within a more expansive narrative of unjust urban policy, the vicissitudes of industry and the history of American infrastructure ... Clark constructs a bleak portrait of a government marked by opacity, greed and a kick-the-can-down-the-road culture of willful negligence in a city where residents are mostly poor and mostly black ... The Poisoned City is meticulously researched. But in pursuit of comprehensiveness, the book can feel tedious and distant, missing a human element. Clark relies heavily on document dumps and local reporting, so it’s hard to tell what she witnessed and what she gleaned secondhand.
It's hard to overstate how important Anna Clark’s new book The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy (Metropolitan Books, 320 pp., four stars out of four) is for reminding us of the alarming revelations about lead and other contaminants in the city’s water supply ... [a] taut, riveting and comprehensive account ... Clark is meticulous in untangling the welter of misstatements, cover-ups and dismissals of the problem’s severity ... Clark is also unsparing in pointing out how the disproportionate number of poor black families harmed by the crisis were emblematic of Flint’s deeply embedded racial segregation.
The book stands not only as an excellent piece of political and environmental investigative journalism, but also as a study of urban American racial politics. Clark traces the impact of early 20th century redlining, overcrowding, and sub-standard infrastructure on the crisis. It should come as no surprise that the tainted water's deleterious effects were most severe in poor, black neighborhoods that were deliberately created through segregationist housing policies when the city was thriving. As the dominoes of middle-class flight and urban blight toppled, a series of unforeseen consequences revealed once again that government subsidization of suburbs leads to the dilapidation of the inner city that is left behind. Clark cites multiple American cities that have suffered similar deterioration as governments redirected money from majority-minority urban hubs to majority-white suburban spokes.
In her new book, The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy, Anna Clark briskly outlines how a series of decisions made by GM and public officials...led to a vastly more dangerous tragedy ... Clark, a freelance journalist based in Detroit, doesn’t tell us anything new about the crisis. But she expertly ties together current events with some of the other corporate and government decisions that got Flint to this fateful point.
Clark avoids sanctimonious judgments, but she isn’t afraid to painstakingly show how racism and state-sanctioned white supremacy shaped the socioeconomic policies of Flint.
[A] complex, exquisitely detailed account, freelance journalist and Detroit Free Press contributor Clark draws on interviews, emails, and other materials to describe the ensuing catastrophe ... Clark goes far beyond the immediate crisis ... A potent cautionary tale of urban neglect and indifference. Infuriated readers will be heartened by the determined efforts of protesters and investigative reporters.
