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The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
 
 
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The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood [Paperback]

David Simon (Author), Edward Burns (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)

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Book Description

June 15, 1998 0767900316 978-0767900317
The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known--and cautiously avoided--by most of Baltimore. But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a 20-year veteran of the urban drug war, tell the chilling story of this desolate crossroad.

Through the eyes of one broken family--two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable 15-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough, Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the country and unflinchingly assess why law enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have accomplished so little. This extraordinary book is a crucial look at the price of the drug culture and the poignant scenes of hope, caring, and love that astonishingly rise in the midst of a place America has abandoned.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is a powerful book, a window on aspects of America most people would rather ignore. To their great credit, the authors--David Simon wrote Homicide, the basis for the popular television show; Edward Burns is a former Baltimore police officer, now a public school teacher--refuse to sensationalize their subject or make its people into stereotypes. For a year the two hung out in a West Baltimore neighborhood that was a center of the drug trade. At the center of the narrative is the McCullough family--DeAndre, age 15, and his drug-addicted parents, Gary and Fran. While reading The Corner, there are times when we pity them, times when they make us angry. The book's strength, though, is that we always understand them. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This portrayal of a year in drug-crazed west Baltimore will satisfy neither readers looking for a perceptive witness to the urban crisis nor those in search of social analysis. Simon (Homicide, LJ 6/1/91), a crime reporter, and Burns, a Baltimore police veteran and public school teacher, mask their presence in the scene with an omniscient style that strains credibility, and the chronological framework blunts the impact of their most compelling themes. The authors salute the courageous but futile efforts of individual parents, educators, and police officers but deny the possibility of a social solution to the devastation they acknowledge is rooted in social policy. A more compelling account is Our America: Life and Death (LJ 6/1/97) on the South Side of Chicago, based on interviews conducted by 13-year-old public housing residents LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman in 1993. For larger public libraries. (Photos not seen..
-?Paula Dempsey, Loyola Univ., Chicago
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 576 pages
  • Publisher: Broadway (June 15, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0767900316
  • ISBN-13: 978-0767900317
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
49 of 50 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
this book took me back to an area i grew-up in and escaped from in my early 20s. I've known many persons such as the characters in this book. They are real and do exist unfortantly. I am now employed and daily working with the court system in Baltimore, Maryland where I grew up. I know that some of these characters lives have not changed for the better at least because i've seen them in court. I know that the areas are worse than before because I visit them to do home visits for my job, and I know that the police still perform as they did when the book was written, and Baltimore's crime rate remains the same. Sad as it is, ther are still no real solutions to the problem that the arthors wrote about, and the corners are still in existance, but the players, or shall I say victims are becoming younger everyday. The faces are new and the conditions are worse. The Corner, in my opinion is a powerful story. Unlike some readers, I at times had to but it down, collect myself, and then pick it up at a latter time. To be in it, but not of it was hard and always is. To see that someone else has taken the time to witness it and but it into story is heartwrenching. I know these characters, feel for them, cry for them, and each day I pray for them.
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Corner is one of those stories that stops us out-to-save-the-world types in our tracks. What do you do with a situation like this? Police, politicians, charitable organizations, treatment centers, educators, and tireless optimistic reformers seem to be completely ineffective throughout the book. The book has its bright spots: when someone goes into rehab, when a long-term user leaves the corner for good, when one of the kids returns to school. But everyone knows, and the reader begins to have a sense, that the changes don't last long and tragedy will strike again, so why hope?

But the book is much more than a recounting of failed social programs and policing. The Corner is the story of real people with real desires and dreams. All have dreams beyond the corner, but none have a way to get there. Some have fallen from successful pasts, and some were born into the strange West Baltimore economy of buying, selling, and using. The authors looked closely enough to know that Gary was once a successful businessman, that Fran was once planning to attend college, that Blue is an accomplished artist. But to most of America, they are faceless drug addicts who should know better, who should clean themselves up and get out of there.

As the yearlong account unfolds, it is clear that getting "out of there" is not a realistic option. Few have any support system to speak of, and the government programs designed to help don't always-even if someone manages to navigate the endless bureaucracy. In the end, the corner triumphs in all but a few cases. The Corner is an eye-opening story that asks us to become aware of the people caught in situations like these in inner-city America. They are real people who have become completely detached from society at large, but they are still human beings. The book does not provide any answers, but it provokes thought as to what could possibly bring the people of every Fayette Street in every West Baltimore a glimmer of real hope.

"Empathy demands that we recognize ourselves in the faces at Mount and Fayette, that we acknowledge the addictive impulse as something more than simple lawlessness, that we begin to see the corner as the last refuge of the truly disowned." ---David Simon and Edward Burns

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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I am a white suburban woman who began to read this book to learn about a life that is very different from my own and because I wanted to learn about the IV drug culture, having a cousin who shot drugs in NYC for 15 years. This book should be read by anyone who thinks that have the answer to the ills of the city, or education, or healthcare, or poverty or whatever. They will quickly see that the problems that plague our inner cities are much like trying to treat a cancer in the human body: you can't try and single out or isolate one specific problem area and try to fix it. You need to look at the entire system, taking into account the interconnectedness of these problems when you try and come up with a solution.

It is naive and utterly foolish to think that you can isolate the issues of the city and solve them independently- you can't. I urge anyone who has any influence over public policy of any kind to spend a few days and read this book. It will forever alter your view on how to "fix" the problems of neighborhoods like these and make you realize you are up against something that is much bigger than it appears. And policy makers: it is not as easy as as having a war on drugs. You need to start by bringing a thriving economic job base back into our cities so people have the opportunity to become meaningfully employed and can try and have a chance at life. When you strip away one's economic opportunities- you are cutting off their blood supply. It is just that simple. A MUST READ FOR ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS IN THE USA!

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Riveting Look at Poverty, Drugs and the Inner City
David Simon & Ed Burns bring you into a fascinating world - Inner City Baltimore - while interspersing big picture discussions about the War on Drugs. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Daniel Tyman
stays with you
I read this book in January 1996, shortly after it came out I'm pretty sure. I saw it displayed on a bookshelf in the library and somehow was struck by its cover and decided on a... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Stefan
best ethnography
how do i know i've read an incredible ethnography?? when I'm done, and I put the book down, I am overwhelmed with emotion and I cannot stop thinking about the book for weeks. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Bella Berlin
Is this ever depressing?
Oh good grief, is this ever a depressing book?

As we all know, there's drug dealing on the streets of most major (and many minor) cities in America. Read more
Published 11 months ago by J. Bowen
Devastating
Most of the addicts are charming, even well-intentioned people, but still addicts, they will ultimately do whatever is necessary for their next fix. Read more
Published 19 months ago by ohng
A related book
There is nothing new that I can add in praise of this book. What's depressing, disgusting, even, is that in the 14 years since this book was written nothing has changed for the... Read more
Published 21 months ago by John W. Pierce
Some of the best writing I've ever read
Ignore the second editorial review quoted at the top - they've completely missed the point, the quality, and the impact of this book. Read more
Published 23 months ago by B. Marshall
The family that dopes together.
David Simon spent years on the Baltimore Sun, back when it really was a newspaper and this work reflects what kind of a reporter he was. Read more
Published on August 28, 2009 by Neil The Unreel
On the Empathy of Species
After reading and enjoying `Homicide', I expected Simon and Burns to simply offer a conflicting story from the street perspective*. Read more
Published on May 15, 2009 by HDTwoodsman
The Corner, maybe the most relevant book on the topic
The Corner clearly tells us about the life of inner-city neighborhoods and its inhabitants. The dark side of the world is revealed through extremely realistic descriptions,... Read more
Published on September 19, 2008 by Micline
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Fat Curt is on the corner. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Fayette Street, Fat Curt, Mount Street, West Baltimore, Dew Drop, Vine Street, Monroe Street, Manny Man, Bob Brown, Miss Ella, New York, Ella Thompson, John Boy, June Bey, Rose Davis, Boyd Street, Franklin Square, Bon Secours, Western District, Fran Boyd, Francis Woods, Miss Roberta, Little Stevie, Eggy Daddy, Death Row
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