Book cover of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret

Book description

The MacArthur grant-winning environmental justice activist's riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America's most vulnerable

A Smithsonian Magazine Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020

Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur "genius," grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that's been called…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Waste as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

One of the most important new issues faced by rights advocates is climate change. Macarthur genius award-winner Catherine Coleman Flowers is on the front line of that fight, based on her own childhood as the daughter of an activist Black family in Lowndes County, Alabama. This memoir captures Flowers’ essence: someone who just can’t let an injustice slide by. And she will talk to anyone who might be able to help, including with cleaning up the raw sewage that continues to poison the homes of many poor Alabamians. Flowers clearly describes the link between local rights issues and the global…

A powerful investigation into decades-long environmental injustice and land exploitation that have compromised African-American communities, in this case, in Alabama, and around the Deep South. A harrowing look at just how relentless southern white political structures have oppressed poor, rural African-American communities. In the end, also a riveting example of how – with proper leadership and organization -- communities can come together to fight back against structural racism.

If you love Waste...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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