Habitats for Inhumanity
The 2018 Arlington Reads series features an investigative journalist, a Princeton sociologist turned urban ethnographer and a leading authority on housing policy — each telling stories of people’s hopes, dreams and losses in the imminent face of eviction, segregation and inhumane living conditions.
Author of "Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America"
In a heartbreaking trajectory that illustrates how this national crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched - from distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs; from disparate cities to once-idylic farm towns - Beth Macy's takes us into the epicenter of America's twenty-plus year struggle with opioid addiction.
From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where over treatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same communities featured in her bestselling book "Factory Man," the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death.
Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question - why her only son died - and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need.
Richard Rothstein - Thursday, May 3
Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy and author of “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” (2017), argues that residential racial segregation in the U.S. is not the result of decisions by private institutions or individuals but the direct result of racially explicit government laws and policies ― including discriminatory zoning ― at the local, state, and federal levels. “The Color of Law” is the story of present-day America in all its municipalities, large and small, liberal and reactionary.
According to Sherrilyn Ifill, President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “Rothstein reveals a history of racism hiding in plain sight and compels us to confront the consequences of the intentional, decades-long governmental policies that created a segregated America.”
Matthew Desmond - Thursday, May 17
Desmond, a Princeton sociologist and MacArthur "Genius,” is the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” (2016). Desmond takes readers into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee and tells the stories of eight families who struggle to keep a roof over their heads as they face extreme poverty, eviction and economic exploitation.
The fates of these families are in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher turned inner-city entrepreneur, and Tobin Charney, who runs one of the worst trailer parks in Milwaukee. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today.
From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where over treatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same communities featured in her bestselling book "Factory Man," the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death.
Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question - why her only son died - and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need.
