One of the most shameful pieces of American history involves the post Civil War decades, when thousands of blacks were lynched for perceived misdeeds. Blood at the Root relates the ugly history of Forsyth County, Ga., where hateful whites decided in 1912 to drive out every remaining black resident under the threat of arson, lynching and gunfire. More than 1,000 terrified … [Read more...]
Harrowing ‘Girl Walks Out of a Bar’ could help other addicts
Lisa Smith has written a chilling account of her life as a New York lawyer addicted to alcohol and cocaine. Smith got an early start. By age 8 she was sneaking sips of alcohol at parties hosted by her parents. By 13 she hung around “almost exclusively” with drinking kids, and by 15 she was binge drinking while also trying pot and cocaine. “By 18, I was a straight-A … [Read more...]
Survey of global prison practices illuminating, if short on solutions
Baz Dreisinger is an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York, where she founded the Prison-to-College Pipeline program. In this new book, she recounts her travels to nine nations to examine their prison systems and compare them with U.S. incarceration practices. Dreisinger joins a growing chorus of U.S. leaders who … [Read more...]
‘Evicted’: A numbing look at the nexus of housing and poverty
Matthew Desmond was in college when he learned that a bank had taken his boyhood home, forcing his parents to move. “I remember being deeply sad and embarrassed,” he writes. He began building houses with Habitat for Humanity, while studying poverty and visiting homeless people. In 2008 he moved into a trailer park in a poor Milwaukee neighborhood to learn more about … [Read more...]
Beyond the pills: A look at mind over the matter of illness
Placebo-controlled medical trials “have been one of the most important developments in medicine, allowing us to determine scientifically which medicines work and which don’t, saving countless lives in the process,” writes Jo Marchant in this compelling new book. Researchers commonly test the efficacy of new drugs by dividing patients into two groups. One group receives … [Read more...]