The Poisoned City · Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy

The first full account of the Flint, Michigan, water scandal, an American tragedy, with new details, from Anna Clark, the award-winning Michigan journalist who has covered the story from its beginnings

When the people of Flint, Michigan, turned on their faucets in April 2014, the water pouring out was poisoned with lead and other toxins. Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint—a largely poor African American city of about 100,000 people—were not seen as credible, even in matters of their own lives.

It took 18 months of activism and a band of dogged outsiders to force the state to admit that the water was poisonous. But this was only after 12 people died and Flint's children suffered irreparable harm. The long battle for accountability and a humane response to this man-made disaster have only just begun.

In the first full-length account of this epic failure, The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision-making. Cities like Flint are set up to fail—and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences may be mortal.

“An arresting and copiously documented saga of moneyed corruption... A

bracing, closely reported chronicle... Clark ably pieces together the

grotesque convergence of forces that transformed Flint into a byword of

failed oversight and artificially induced hazard. And she rightly notes

that the water crisis, as sudden and unexpected as it might have seemed,

was the culmination of more than a generation’s worth of systemic

neglect and cynical austerity-minded pillaging from on high.” ―Bookforum“Searing

scrutiny... Riveting... A sobering read through all the spin and cover

ups... A cornucopia of history and responsibly researched details... I

have yet to encounter a more thorough, accurate or readable account of

the poisoning of Flint’s municipal water supply than The Poisoned City. This is an important book, for Flint, for all American cities, and for our nation.” ―East Village Magazine, Flint, Michigan

“Incisive

and informed... In the first full accounting of the Flint water crisis,

Clark combines a staggering amount of research and several intimate

story lines to reveal how the Michigan city was poisoned by its leaders

and then largely abandoned to its fate by state officials.... Clark

takes no prisoners, naming all the names and presenting the confirming

research. ‘Neglect,’ she warns, ‘is not a passive force in American

cities, but an aggressive one.’” ―Booklist (starred review)

“A

complex, exquisitely detailed account... A potent cautionary tale of

urban neglect and indifference... Clark goes far beyond the immediate

crisis―captured nationally in images of bottled water being distributed

to Flint’s poor, the most severely affected―to explain ‘decades of

negligence’ that had mired the city in ‘debt, dysfunctional urban

policy, disappearing investment, disintegrating infrastructure, and a

compromised democratic process.’ She warns that other declining American

cities are similarly threatened.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Compelling...

A comprehensive account [that] boils down this complex tragedy... While

devastating, this account is also inspiring in its coverage of the role

of Flint’s ‘lionhearted residents’ and their grassroots activism,

community organizing, and independent investigation... This extremely

informative work gives an authoritative account of a true American urban

tragedy that still continues.” ―Publishers Weekly

“With

every heartbreaking detail, Anna Clark’s must-read and beautifully

rendered account of the Flint water crisis makes clear that this

horrific poisoning of an essential American city was never just an

unfortunate accident. Instead, it was the tragic, and indeed tragically

inevitable, result of the fiscal, as well as environmental, racism that

seems to run as deeply and powerfully in this country as water itself.” ―Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

“Anna

Clark’s book on the Flint water crisis rises to a great challenge: it

sacrifices neither complexity nor moral clarity. And by etching this

story’s outlines in decades of racist neglect, it is not just a splendid

work of journalism. It is a genuine contribution to history.” ―Rick Perlstein, author of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan “The Poisoned City

is a gripping account of a devastating, unnatural disaster. Through

deep research and on-the-ground reporting, Anna Clark makes the case

that Flint’s water crisis is the result of decades of disinvestment and

neglect, worsened by austerity policies and governmental malfeasance.

This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America’s

ongoing failure to deal with environmental injustice, racial inequality,

and economic marginalization.” ―Thomas J. Sugrue, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

“The

story of the Flint crisis is disturbing enough even if one knows only a

few details. But the entire case, as laid out by Anna Clark, is

enraging. Clark has sifted the layers of politics, history, and myopic

policy to chronicle the human costs of this tragedy. Flint is not an

outlier, it’s a parable – one whose implications matter not just to a

single municipality but to every city in the country and all who live in

them.” ―Jelani Cobb, Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism, Columbia University

“The

poisoning of Flint was unintentional but it was no accident. Read Anna

Clark’s empathetic yet emphatic history and you will understand how this

American tragedy could have been prevented – and why it wasn’t. Her

book will make you mad, but it will also give you hope for the rebirth

of our cities and maybe even our democracy.” ―Dan Fagin, author of Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation

Anna Clark is a journalist in Detroit. Her writing has appeared in

Elle Magazine, the New York Times, Politico, the Columbia Journalism

Review, Next City, and other publications. She has been a Fulbright

fellow in Nairobi, Kenya, and a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the

University of Michigan.