...[a] deeply researched narrative ... There is never a dull moment in The Year of Dangerous Days, and Griffin adroitly captures the intrigue and depravity of South Florida at the time ... Griffin has no shortage of fascinating characters to work with ... It’s impossible to read Griffin’s timely and searing account without thinking about its implications for our current moment — one of mounting social unrest over immigration and racism. As Carter’s domestic adviser would later write, 'It is difficult to conjure up a more catastrophic final year in any American president’s term of office than 1980, Carter’s last year in the White House.'
... a well-written narrative of the events of that transformative year ... Griffin writes nonfiction with a spice of fiction. His character development excels. 1980 was an astonishing year for Miami that changed the metropolis forever. Walking down Caya Ocho, any visitor could tell that Miami had become firmly fixed as the capital of Latin America. This is not just another cookie-cutter American town.
Miami-based journalist Griffin employs his trade with gusto in this deeply investigated account of real American carnage at the height of the drug war ... This is a series of stories that have been depicted in other books and publications, but Griffin’s engrossing use of primary sources and cogent analyses of how all the pieces fit together results in a propulsive story about the dangerous ways people learn to live together ... An engrossing, peek-between-your-fingers history of an American city on the edge.
In this cinematic chronicle, journalist Griffin...examines how an influx of immigrants, violent race riots, and a cocaine epidemic all collided in Miami in 1980 and led to the radical transformation of the city ... Out of this tumultuous year, Griffin contends, Miami emerged a stronger, more cosmopolitan city with a broader economic base. This vivid and well-documented urban history offers hope that crisis can bring about lasting change.
