#WhatTheEyesDontSee #NetGalley

A well-documented book about the Flint water crisis. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attish shares her experience of this tragedy and how her heroic action helped to save children lives. I liked the way she starts the book by sharing her family and life background like a biographical book. Then, she shares her experiences accompanied with documents and facts about this horrible tragedy. This book should be in college and community libraries.

The pediatrician/medical researcher/intern supervisor author has written an ambitious and compelling volume explaining her discovery of widespread lead contamination of Flint, Michigan's water supply. Her steps in data collection and painstaking efforts to convince government officials of the problem amaze the reader. Putting a human face on the researcher and those affected, though, held the greatest appeal of the book.

I enjoyed this book, especially how researched & scientific it was. I appreciate the detail and naming of names of people associated with the Flint crisis. I do wish it would have included more about the current state of things in Flint (if the water is fixed, if pipes have been replaced in all residences).

This book was everything I hoped for and more.

When I first heard of the Flint Water Crisis, I was in disbelief. How could people knowingly put others, including impressionable and still developing children, into so much danger just because they were too prideful and lazy to own up to mistake after mistake on so many different levels?

Here we are, in the 2010s, and the U.S. government has come so far; it's incredibly reliable and thorough in all the work that it does to try and improve the lives of the people and give us a relatively good world standing. Wait. No? Okay never mind then.

I heard of this book and I k n e w that I had to read what someone so close to the crisis had to say.

The good doctor's writing was hauntingly compelling and her prose was such a beautiful touch to the chronicle of her fight for Flint. It was absolutely seamless and effortless in its fluidity.

In between research frustrations and suppressed voices, Dr. Hanna-Attisha wove familial anecdotes and her own history into the tapestry of her story. While at times I really wanted to know how her research methods were approved or if some people finally got it through their thick skulls that they needed to stop their stupidity, I generally enjoyed the peeks into her life outside of the present-day storyline. The pictures really tied it together and made everything seem more real.

Complaint: I feel like the ending wasn't quite enough. It seemed like the situation was entirely resolved, which is great for the storytelling element of the work, but I think with something as work-in-progress as Flint (which is not to say that I know better than Dr. Hanna-Attisha, just that it seems like all the hurdles after the small progression are overly muted), it's better to warn of the trials to come and take a bit of a more weary tone. I love love love my happy endings; more importantly, the reality of the continued solemnity of Flint's situation needs to be more present at the close of this book. Even now, there is still much to be desired.

A million thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for this phenomenal ARC !

I love the story, and it's really important. I love the author, and I love her voice. The book is very uneven, though. The sections about the water crisis and its history, including the run-down of the DC water crisis, are fantastic. But then there is a question of what further context to embed the story in, and the author chose some family history deep dives that don't really seem to belong. She's setting herself up to be a part of a story of fighters, and also giving some interesting cultural stories to make us see immigrants from Iraq as part of our tradition of humans and activists. That's a beautiful thing, but I felt that was out of place here. But that's my only objection.

Dr. Mona, as she came to be called in the media, played the role of a closer here. Maybe a closer that came in with 3 innings left and the home team behind on the scoreboard, but a closer. The game had been going for a while, and she had been unaware of it. There were already measurements being taken of Flint water that showed astronomically high lead levels. But Dr. Mona, one she became aware of the problem, marshaled all the power that a pediatrician in charge of the local university's residence program could, and rallied people to her cause. She also very carefully doles out credit to everyone involved in the book -- she is not a heroic island in her own telling. It just so happens that this pediatrician/researcher has a best friend from high school who was a water sanitation engineer kicked out of the EPA because she refused to cover up the DC water crisis, and the two of them put together were indomitable. Most of the action of the book, between when the author became aware of the lead in the water and her press conference announcing its deleterious effects on Flint children, fits in a month, basically September 2015. There had been a big lead-in and there has been quite a lot happening in the aftermath. The epilogue does not extend so far forward to include the recent announcement by the governor that Flint is now in the clear (a highly suspect conclusion), and I'll probably look up her reaction to that.

I love the spirit of the book, her celebration of activists, especially the two specialists who had been deeply hurt and jaded after the DC water crisis in 2003-2004, but showed up in Flint anyway because they fight the fight, without hope that they would win. Her deep gratitude to her boss, who runs the hospital she works at, who could have thrown her under the bus but instead took political hit after hit for her, was palpable. Dr. Mona was rightfully enraged at the poisoning of an entire community, and she worked hard to stop the poison. But she was also incredibly lucky, surrounded by amazing people, and was able to get results within a couple months. A big win. But not an all-encompassing one. There are still a lot of battles to fight, a lot of data missing or denied. Knowing the story of what worked in Flint is empowering.

In the end, this book lies somewhere between a journalistic nonfiction account of the Flint crisis and a memoir of that period in Dr. Mona's life. It's a little unsettled in that intersection, but that doesn't prevent it informing and inspiring.

I got a copy to review from Net Galley.

Brilliant public health story plagued by uneven pacing

I have very mixed feelings about this book. When Dr. Hanna-Attisha was actually talking about the water crisis, the book was absolutely brilliant. She readily shares credit with the other people working on the crisis and gives great explanations on the process she and her team went through. However, the book should have read like a thriller, with the crime (lead in the water), victims (the children of Flint), the perpetrators (the MDEQ) and the hero (and author, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha and her cohort). The book should have been hard to put down. Instead, the book went into considerable discussions on several generations of the author’s family, mostly irrelevant to the story. And several times in the book, the story got preachy and repetitive. I found myself skipping over pages where the storyline veered completely away from the water crisis. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and recommend it for anyone interested in any of the areas touched by this book: medicine, science, pubic health, or politics.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.