Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #576 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Richard Price, author of CLOCKERS
An important document, as devastating as it is lucid.

Linwood Barclay, author of NO TIME FOR GOODBYE
A towering achievement.

New York Times Book Review
Brave, unblinkered, and heartbreaking.

Customer Reviews

Shining a light
In this magnificent, addictively readable book David Simon and Ed Burns take the time to document the lives of a small group of drug addicts and dealers living in a desolate Baltimore neighbourhood. In doing so they have created an important and moving book, and given a human face to a group of impoverished, forgotten people with almost no prospects, destined otherwise to become nothing more than anonymous statistics. It's a worthy enough project, but the authors have created a work that is not only a document and a testament to a time, place and social ill, but a slick and entertaining book in its own right.

The pace of the book is slower, and The Corner is less compelling than Simon's masterful "Homicide," lacking as it does the "whodunnit" elements, but this book is no less worthy of praise.

Simon and Burns strike a near-perfect balance here between the minutiae of the lives of the addicts and their families - the petty crime, the designer clothes, the packages, the basketball games - and the wider subjects which explore how and why this forgotten underclass came to be - the "war on drugs," immigration, unemployment and the mentality and economy of the drug trade. It's a huge book at over 550 pages long, but it is never overly weighty or preachy. Simon and Burns view their subject from all angles, illuminating it in three dimensions, moving in the space of a page from a close up of a desperate junkie tearing copper piping from a basement, to an authoratitive exploration of the migration of the Black population from Carolina and Virginia, the racial tensions that arose and the impact of WW2 on the poor communities of Baltimore. With several years of research under their belts, most of it on the corner that gives the book its title, the authors can be trusted completely.

Anyone who has enjoyed The Wire, The Corner or Homicide will find plenty to recognise and enjoy. As with other Simon projects you cannot help but feel for almost all the characters here, usually despite their actions. These are human beings, and there isn't an easy judgement or caricature in sight. A feeling of helplessness permeates all the lives presented here as one sad generation retreads the steps of the last, and the somewhat depressing afterword offers little evidence of any of the youngsters in the book managing to climb free of their surroundings. This is reality. The story of Gary McCullough, the contradictory but immensely likeable standout of all those featured here, is particularly heartbreaking.

Simon and Burns don't have the answers but they've done more than most to blow open the pain and hoplessness of the drug trade and the impact it has on everyone it touches. This is an important, informative and enjoyable book that deserves to be widely read, and after completing both Homicide and The Corner I would now consider anything written by Simon to be a must read. His name is a byword for honesty, bravery and writing of the highest calibre. Lets hope another book is somewhere on the horizon.

O'Malley, O'Malley ...
Every politician should be forced to read this, and squirm as their lies about 'the war on drugs' are carefully skewered, one by one. The rest of us should read it because it's an amazing book, a great book. It examines the hell of one particular underclass with the biting intelligence of a Chomsky and the profound compassion of Dostoyevsky's 'From the House of the Dead'. A vital present-tense narrative of broken and wasted lives is interspersed with brilliant essays on why things are this way and why the status quo is designed to dehumanize us all. But it really isn't heavy going; the authors describe it as a work of journalism, but it's journalism of the highest order, with a quicksilver wit, bracing anger and the selfless sympathy which allows us to witness other people's lives.

Detailed and Thought-Provoking
In The Corner, David Simon and Ed Burns study in detail an area of Baltimore infested by the drug culture, which will be more than familiar to viewers of The Wire, Simon's hugely critically-acclaimed television series. However, this is not The Wire - this book is only concerned with those living and dealing in the area around the intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets (the eponymous Corner). So don't expect a leap to view the drug war from the side of the police - that was dealt with in Simon and Burns' companion book, Homicide.

In this area that America has largely abandoned, the book follows DeAndre McCollough and his drug-addicted parents over the course of a year, describing their struggle to continue living in the inner city. Often shocking and saddening to read, it opens your eyes wide to a problem you may not have considered before, or simply didn't consider 'all that bad', as I did.

Equally fascinating, though, is the analysis that goes into the problems and solutions in the neighbourhood around the Corner, which are reflected in many American inner cities today. Why is it that the police, the welfare system, and society as a whole have failed to 'clean up' these areas? This question is considered thoroughly over the book's substantial length, and often the answers that are suggested are surprising.

This is a tough read, regarding the content, though it is also a gripping and engrossing study. If you have any interest in the fight against drug culture, I would highly recommend this book.