I really appreciated the learning experience I had with The Poisoned City. I learned so much about the crisis of Flint and what has been allowed to occur there. There wasn't a strong or sweeping narrative, definitely more informative, but I did think it was an excellent investigation of the issue.

I heard about this book as a native Michigander. You couldn't escape this story if you were a human and breathing in Michigan. The most flabbergasting thing is you never think something like this should ever happen and then it happens in your own backyard. I applaud Anna for telling this story, because I think so many people assume that the story is over. By reading this book, you know that it has been a long process. The stories we were getting even on our news in St. Joseph, were only a part of it, there was so much more. Not just in the everyday crisis that the people of Flint were living as Anna shows us, but in the history of town, in the mismanagement of the water system and so much more. I was just blown away to find how deep this all went. I very much appreciated that Anna took the time to personally go to Flint on the ground and meet people from Flint and actually get their stories. It would have been so easy to just get sound bytes from articles or regurgitate yesterday's news. But it would be a disservice to the people of the town to tell the story that way. I think Anna knew that. It gave me a lot to think about and I hope more people have the opportunity or take the opportunity to read it as well.

I'm afraid this is the type of non-fiction that I struggle with: lots of names, dates, and information without any strong emotional connection. I was interested in reading about the Flint water crisis because of the many people it affected, not so much in the bureaucracy behind its origins. So, maybe the fault lies more with my taste than with the writing of this book. However, I was hoping for a throughline that focused on maybe a few families affected or one of the crusaders who tried to draw attention to the crisis (maybe a little more drama a la "Erin Brockovich.") Instead this felt like a recitation of government names and responsibilities. There was a little bit about one woman's fight to triumph over the government's denial of the water making her family sick - I would have loved the book to be centered more around her. Clark's research is impressive, and I did enjoy her broader look into how systemic racism helped fuel Flint's inaction to fix the water issue. Although I expected this book to be depressing, the parts about the Flint citizens' struggles was actually the easiest to connect to and to be interested by. Clark no doubt spent countless hours researching this topic down to the very last detail - and for me, that was the problem. The story was bogged down by details instead of being insightful into the human experience of how heartbreaking it can be when our government fails us.

Humans need five basic things to survive: air, shelter, food, sleep and water. If any of these things are not up to standards, we will become ill at the very least.

Air pollution, spoiled food, insufficient sleep, houses with mold and toxic water are just a few examples of things that can seriously affect our health.

In The Poisoned City, Anna Clark tells the story of Flint’s water crisis. The crisis began in 2014 when the water source switched from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River.

Clark also discusses the background of Flint and why the city was susceptible to this and other injustices. I had forgotten that there was an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease during the water crisis.

The amount of lies that different levels of government told the people of Flint about the water is remarkable and horrifying. Several agencies fixed the numbers regarding levels of lead. No amount of lead is safe. The citizens of Flint knew that something was wrong with the water but the powers that be said: “Everything is fine. Don’t worry.”

Thank goodness that they didn’t listen. The people of Flint are still dealing with the fallout from the crisis. What if the issue was unresolved?

Clark does a great job of introducing all of the numbers, percentages, statistics, etc. without making it boring or overwhelming. The book is a good mix of history, human interest stories and facts.

I am a member of the ALA Carnegie Medal Committee. This title made the 2019 Longlist but it did not make the Shortlist. See the complete Shortlist <a href="http://www.ala.org/awardsgrants/carnegieadult/short-lists"> here.

A very well done book on the Flint, Michigan water crisis. Anna Clark thoroughly researched and it shows. The ongoing crisis in Flint is an interesting one to read more about.

This was a need-to-know book, a document of thorough research and journalism. Clark approaches the Flint, Michigan water crisis from several perspectives-- and the sheer magnitude of facts sometimes felt overwhelming. However, the reportage was necessary to reveal the far-reaching dimensions of the disaster. Implications of the possibility of similar mishaps throughout the nation were chilling.

This was an incredibly detailed look at the Flint water crisis and the many layers of history and political decisions that brought the city to the point of destruction. The book was well researched and very readable. Recommended for readers who like an in-depth examination of a crisis and its causes.

One of my pet peeves is lazy journalism, the kind that “quotes” studies without naming them, the type that simply copies someone else’s article without fact checking, the brand that presents conclusions as facts without providing the manner in which it arrived there. Luckily, Anna Clark is not a lazy journalist. The preparation for her non-fiction book “The Poisoned City” about the Flint water crisis obviously involved a lot of painstaking research supported by extensive footnotes, and her own conclusions, presented in the epilogue, are nothing if not comprehensible. Ms Clark presents a lot of facts and figures but managed to do it in an engaging manner and without resorting to playing on heartstrings too frequently (although I personally would have left out the quote by the lady whose dogs died from lead poisoning, only because someone who is smart enough to not let her family use suspicious water but thinks nothing of letting her dogs drink it is not really a sympathetic character).

“The Poisoned City” is a book about politics, chemistry, medicine, about financial (mis-)management, environmental protection, and why it is important for a community to band together when the cause requires it, because we are indeed stronger together than when we stand alone. The story of the Flint water crisis is important because its underlying problems affect all of us living in the United States today, and simply sticking your head in the sand and hoping for favorable winds isn’t going to help. It teaches lessons that we should at least be aware of, because in the end, we are all equally responsible for ensuring that our vision of democracy is put into practice in an inclusionary manner.

I very highly recommend this book to anyone, whether you’re interested in the topics mentioned above, enjoy a good fact-based thriller, or are simply a fan of great writing.

“The Poisoned City” is published by Henry Holt & Company. I received a free copy in exchange for a review via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

At its heart this is a well researched and well written book on the Flint Water Crisis. It goes much deeper than the water crisis though, reaching back to explain the history and systemic racism that Flint has faced in the past decades. It was heartbreaking, illuminating, and hard to put down.

“Thousands have lived without love; not one without water.”
—W.H. Auden"

The short review: Everyone should read this book. All readers interested in learning why the disaster in Flint happened. Plus, all other US readers who couldn’t care less about Flint or its problems. A 2016 study by the National Resources Defense Council found that fifty-three hundred US water systems were in violation of federal lead rules.

Now for the longer review.

I remember first hearing about Flint’s water system problems from Rachel Maddow in December 2015-January 2016, and being horrified. Then the story was everywhere for approximately 6 months. And then it wasn’t. I never ceased being curious about how Flint’s water supply became and stayed contaminated, and I suspected that what occurred in Flint revealed risks not limited to Flint.

Articles and interviews on the subject in 2016 or so seemed to be comfortable stopping with the following oft-repeated but incomplete version of the story: An interim, appointed city manager made a careless, cost-cutting decision to change water sources. As a result, Flint residents, including kids, were exposed to lead in their municipal water system for eighteen months. Lead poisoning does permanent damage. Residents were lied to by multiple layers of politicians, from appointed city managers up to agencies reporting to Governor Rick Snyder, and Gov. Snyder himself. Flint residents’ repeatedly expressed concerns about poor water quality were ignored and, once the crisis was confirmed, the solution came excruciatingly slowly. Many articles repeated a statement that was untrue: the Flint River wasn’t contaminated or toxic. The problem was never the river. It was Flint’s failure to comply with water processing standards that caused the contamination.
I haven’t vetted the-below linked timeline from CNN, but no obvious errors jumped out at me, and it’s very useful for readers interested in The Poisoned City for a couple of reasons. First, a timeline reveals what narratives sometimes fail to – just how excruciatingly long it takes us to identify and solve highly urgent problems, if even a person or two serves as a roadblock or source of delay. Those persons running for ostensibly-minor offices, whose names appear at the end of a very long ballot each October and you have no idea what the office-holder does or who the candidates are? Those people are critical to your local experience. Second, you can read this timeline several times and conclude that you still have no idea what happened. Anna Clark’s book is the answer.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/us/flint-water-crisis-fast-facts/index.html

Anna Clark’s The Poisoned City is a masterful, efficient account of Flint, from its pre-Revolutionary Days to the present. She covers, in particular, the short-term and long-term impacts on Flint of housing segregation, including General Motors’ segregated housing developments offering favorable terms; Harry Truman’s encouragement of General Motors and other manufacturers to move their plants from downtowns to suburbs – in the name of national security --; Michigan’s open records law (that doesn’t apply to its governor or legislature); the details of the federal Lead and Copper Rule – what it requires and how certain cities, including Flint, manipulate their data to claim compliance with its standards; the appropriateness and use of unelected emergency managers and their impact on citizens’ voting rights; and, finally, the impact of successive reductions in headcount of Michigan journalists at just the moment when the Flint story sat ready to be uncovered. By the time Clark reveals that, in addition to everything else, Michigan politicans concealed the existence of the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s Disease in its water, the reader is not at all surprised. If this suggests that The Poisoned City is an accumulated research dump, it is not. Clark presents pertinent facts with the skill of a feature writer. She never goes down a rabbit hole. She has a purpose for every fact she provides, and those facts are directly relevant to the water crisis. Every statement has a corresponding endnote available for readers to review for verification and additional information. Hence, the core of the book is actually 2/3 of its page count, and the last 1/3 is comprised of those supporting end notes, which are well worth reading as you go. This is as much of a page-turner as non-fiction can be.

Nothing was inevitable about this tragedy. As Clark notes, other cities with declining populations and aged infrastructure made a multitude of different choices and avoided putting their public water systems at risk. She calls out Lansing and Madison, Wisconsin in particular, as examples of successful approaches. Her last chapter offers suggestions, but also identifies changes that have occurred since the tragedy. Michigan’s emergency manager statute, for example, has been changed in positive ways.

Clark is a top-flight story-teller, and her every sentence is supported by fact. That’s the best reason of all for reading The Poisoned City.

I was given an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

We all know how bad the water has been in Flint for the past few years, but this book lays out that it's actually been going on for decades, and has designed to specifically target African-Americans. This is already really shocking, but the level of historical detail and pages and pages and pages of facts and statistics really bring home how racism and corporate greed have allowed an entire community of people to raise their children sick, with no real action from the people who trust to keep our water clean. Very important read in 2018.

This is an angry book and thank God for that. There are so many things that contributed to the problems in Flint, Michigan that it is almost beyond understanding. It seems especially noteworthy in the current climate where the EPA is protecting businesses and ignoring and under-reporting danger to the general public. Way too few people were actually held accountable for their actions, which should scare the rest of us. As the book makes very clear, there was a perfect storm of events in Flint, but there are lots of other types of infrastructure which is being taped together or ignored altogether. To imagine that the problems encountered in Flint are confined to that area is laughable. It will be heartbreaking to find out whose turn will be next.

Clark’s book is impressively detailed and covers the Flint water crisis dating back to the founding of Flint as a city. Even though Clark calls out the individual players of the city and the state who falsified tests, neglected to do their jobs, and minimized the damage that lead in the water had on the citizens of Flint, she also points to the larger systemic issues at play. She documents the history of Flint’s housing segregation and the more general history of environmental racism--a term that I learned about for the first time in this book and one I think gives us better vocabulary with which to discuss instances like what happened in Flint--that is pervasive in American society. Those historical reflections and framing of the crisis were more appealing to me than the play by play of emails, press conferences, and meetings. Although she does highlight a few folks who were personally affected by Flint’s dirty water and governmental neglect, I wanted those people’s voices to be more at the heart of the story. I think there are so many more stories to tell from that perspective, but they simply didn’t make it into this book. I applaud Clark for meticulously recording seemingly every plot point and communication (or lack of) on the timeline of the crisis. Her writing is clear and straightforward but does leave something to be desired in terms of flare and evoking emotion and empathy. This book overall read like a lengthy journalism article about the scandal with an often short shrifted attempt to humanize the problem.

Extremely thorough and well written investigations into the Flint Water Crisis, from it's origins in how American cities grew around industry, to the racial segregation of suburbs, to the crumbling of our infrastructure and finally to the decisions made by an emergency manager that led to a huge public safety crisis that is ongoing still today. Ms. Clark writes a complete telling of the hows and whys of this tragedy.

The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy was actually incredibly fascinating. Not only did the book tell the story of the Flint water crisis, but a history of Flint as a city and the systemic racism that has shaped the town. I was also surprised to learn about Love Canal's similar tragedy - a town near Niagra Falls that was overcome by chemical disaster. Both Love Canal and Flint overwhelmed by unintentional poisoning that could have been prevented. Also within the depths of the story were enthralling facts about the Great Lakes, such as how Lake Superior is known as a shipwreck graveyard or how the same lake houses the only national park found on an island - I honestly had no clue the Great Lakes were so fascinating and spent hours down a rabbit hole learning more about these things.

What's also intriguing while also being heartbreaking and simultaneously anger-inducing is the thousands of homes built for GM workers, while only a minuscule amount were allotted for workers of color - though a huge population of the workers were in fact non-White. The entire story is honestly so infuriating, and it's all truly so much more than just the water crisis.

Now, I've mentioned more than a few times that non-fiction is not my forte. Memoirs can be either here or there, but a factual story with footnotes and references and further side stories to reference back to - that's a whole different field. While the book was truly fascinating and the information is timely and relevant, I often felt like I was reading a peer-reviewed research paper. Honestly, almost half the book was made up of further references and notes. It took me two weeks to get through The Poisoned City, mostly due to the statistics and other facts that I felt like I often had to go back and review because I felt like I missed something somewhere.

I do highly recommend this book if you're looking to learn more about Flint and its water crisis, but just note the stats and such may make the book seem a bit tough, even though it's not terribly dense like a textbook may be.

This one didn't quite live up to expectations. It included a lot of good information, but was formulated in a way that didn't hold my interest. I understand why all the backstory was included, as it provided a context, but at the same time it worked as a distraction and made it difficult for me to follow things. Not a bad book by any means, just not written in a way that was helpful to me.

A brilliant and heartbreaking look in a crisis that needs to be corrected immediately. The Poisoned City will grab your heart, the story will make you cry and wonder how you can help.

5 stars! - Can I give it more? This book should be required reading in every history class across America!
Truly the best book I have read in ages. This book is an absolute must-read for every person regardless of race, ethnicity or income bracket. The horrors of what happened in Flint Michigan is just a preview of what can happen in any community across America. Most communities have aging lead pipes running underground, unseen as they deliver life-giving water to customers. What happens when those pipes fail or leach lead into houses, businesses and schools? Will anything be learned from the catastrophe that befell Flint Michigan? The author shows just how far government agencies, city workers, state workers, the EPA and the FDA will go to hide the truth from citizens. The various agencies all designed to help the people and save people from environmental harm critically failed Flint residents. Everything was brushed aside, ignored or covered up to hide the utter failure of disconnecting from the Detroit water and hooking up to the Flint River. Many people died. Many more people became sick. A large number of those residents will have long-term health issues that the full consequences are still unknown and may take years to fully understand. This book sheds a massive light on government incompetence and the lack of care for people who they were supposed to help. The author deftly shows how racism played a huge part in this tragedy. It wasn’t until a couple of white women start questioning the water quality and performed independent testing on the “safe” water did anything start to change. Only time will tell if changes are truly real or if other cities will learn from Flints mistakes.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher and Net Galley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Poisoned City offers a thorough and comprehensive look at the Flint water crisis. Anna Clark offers a great deal of insight into the question of how there could be such a monumental failure to protect the public's health and safety. Well researched and highly readable.