100 Books Like Baltimore Revisited

A former journalist, Antero Pietila delves into the history of Baltimore’s battles over housing and race since the 1880s. He shows how racism and antisemitism shaped who could live where in Baltimore, eventually consigning working-class Black people to disintegrating neighborhoods in the inner city. Where this book is especially good is on the history of blockbusting in the 1950s and 1960s.

Pietila introduces us to the real estate agents who preyed on Black people desperate to move out of slums and shows us how they panicked white people into selling their houses cheaply to get out before Black people moved in. Pietila draws connections between this history and the more recent example of speculators who lured Baltimore residents into subprime mortgages. Baltimore successfully sued Wells Fargo for discriminatory lending in 2012.

In the space of two years, D. Watkins published two stunning books about Baltimore. The second, The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir, is sharp and smart, but if I had to only choose one, it would be The Beast Side. In this slim volume of essays, Watkins invites us to explore the two worlds he lives within and between. He grew up on the tough east side, known locally as the beast side, and sold drugs, but also went to college and now teaches creative writing.

While there are many books by Black authors that use stories of poverty and despair to titillate or move white audiences to pity, Watkins does none of that. He speaks first to Black audiences, especially those who maybe don’t love to read, because literacy, he says, is a step towards liberation. The Beast Side may be the best way to see… show more.

In The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Streets, David Simon, also an author of nonfiction books about Baltimore, depicted Baltimore cops as Sisyphean figures trying to fight an endless wave of crime and failing. Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg tell a much less positive story about the police. They examine an elite unit called the Gun Trace Task Force which became, under its leader Wayne Jenkins, a criminal syndicate. Using their badges as weapons, these police officers robbed drug dealers of tens of thousands of dollars, planted weapons and evidence, and terrorized Black Baltimore residents.

As media pundits were wringing their hands about whether Baltimore’s people had gone out of control when they rioted after Freddie Gray’s death, we learn that these cops were literally robbing prescription drugs to sell them on the street. Even if you’re suspicious about the role of police in inner-city communities, this book… show more.

This book reminds us that in addition to shaping our laws, our institutions, and our culture, white supremacy has also shaped our nation’s landscape, from housing discrimination and redlining to blockbusting and urban renewal.

Although Brown focuses on racial segregation and Black neighborhoods in Baltimore, his insights speak to communities of color throughout the United States and how decades of hypersegregation in American cities have adversely impacted health, livelihoods, and lives.

What makes Brown’s analysis of the landscape of urban apartheid so compelling, however, is his recipe for dismantling it and replacing it with a new landscape of racial equity. 

I re-read this book every couple of years.

I love most of Anne Tyler’s novels, but this is my favourite. It contains my all-time favourite boy-girl friendship in Barnaby and Martine, who work together. I completely recognise and relate to their colleague-type banter, full of inside jokes, winding each other up, and covering up for each other. I love that Martine is a bit moody - recognisably human - and that she has Barnaby’s back when no-one else does.

No matter how many times I’ve read this, when Barnaby finally realises how important Martine is to him, I always get tears in my eyes.

Goldstein’s and Weiner’s history of Jews of Baltimore is an unconventional account of this border city. Jews in Baltimore were definitely located in the middle between white Christians on the one hand and Blacks on the other. The book does not flinch from uncovering just what this middle ground meant, how the antisemitism that pervaded Baltimore propelled some Jews toward conservatism (including the support of slavery) and others toward progressivism (including abolition). At the same time, the book explores the rich diversity of Jewish religious life in the city that parallels Jewish participation in building important elements of Baltimore’s economy. I loved learning about a city that was new to me.

David Simon’s Homicide stands as one of the most honest and most vivid looks at police work ever put on paper.

Simon drags us into this violent and chaotic world as few could, based on a year he spent alongside detectives in the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide unit. This insider access produces an immersive experience that unfolds in dramatic fashion.

What absolutely leaps off the page is the weight of the implications of such violent crimes and what it demands of the detectives investigating. These are men and women gripped in a desperate vice, toiling relentlessly in the darkest corners of the city, absorbing grief, frustration, and exhaustion while trying to bring answers to families who are desperate for them.

Simon doesn’t overdramatize the work. He doesn’t need to. He brings us inside the grind: sleepless nights, leads that don’t pan out, political machinations, and the quiet toll the constant… show more.

We all know about the Declaration of Independence and recognize at least a few of the dozens of signatures of the men who signed it. But who knew about the single female name that appears on the document?

Here’s the story of Mary Katharine Goddard, a businesswoman and newspaper publisher, who dared to break the norms of society. When the call went out for a printer to publish the treasonous Declaration, she rose to the task and went so far as to put her name on it! This story offers a fascinating peek into the life of a revolutionary woman.

Sarah Kennecott is a brilliant young doctor who cares deeply about justice, but she’s not like other people; she doesn’t like noises and smells, she doesn’t understand chit chat, and she cannot interpret inflection or nuance.

It’s 1909, and the city of Baltimore is filled with gilded mansions and a seedy corrupt, underworld. Sarah struggles to be accepted as a doctor. After getting fired for looking too closely into the killing of a showgirl, she refuses to back down from the investigation and joins forces with a street-smart private detective who can access saloons, brothels, and burlesque theaters where Sarah isn’t allowed.

Together, they unravel a few secrets that could cost them their lives.

Loved a protagonist who is both a doctor and on the autism scale – we don’t see that many differently-abled protagonists in historical fiction, especially not in mysteries. Refreshing!

Fenton climbed a mountain here and reached the top. Freddie Gray has died in the back of a police van in Baltimore. Something’s wrong with that picture, but who’s going to question the city’s elite Gun Trace Task Force—a vanguard unit in the war on crime—when most civic leaders hold it in awe? Fenton, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, digs in, doing the meticulous research and insightful writing that expose powerfully guarded secrets and plant a flag for accountability.