Scan barcode
A review by anitaofplaybooktag
Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City by Erica L. Green, Wes Moore
4.0
This book follows the five days in the aftermath of Freddy Gray's death while in custody of the Baltimore police. As someone living in the adjacent county at the time, I can say the ramifications of this event roiled Baltimore. By and large, I thought Moore picked a really interesting way to show the events from varying perspectives from an African-American police officer to the owner of the Baltimore Orioles to the manager of a popular roller rink to the sister of a man killed by the police. Each person perceived the events slightly differently, and in their own way, tried to make sense of what happened and tried to help their city.
Moore summarizes his perspectives at the end of the book with a call to action.
This book was uniquely fascinating to me because I know a lot about the physical locations and many of the political players. So it is hard for me to really know how a reader outside of the Baltimore metro area would perceive it. The chapters are very, very short, with each one focusing on a different person. This gives the book a fragmented feeling, and I wonder if that might get confusing for some readers.
And obviously, there is a political message, and not everyone is going to agree with the conclusions. Moore focuses as much on poverty as he does on racism (which in Baltimore, a city where every leadership position is held by black people makes sense), but his final chapter has an academic tone to it and really doesn't talk about how change can be made when a city with so many murders is an unattractive location for economic development. Baltimore has a terrible reputation, and for a city with so many amazing physical assets and beauty, that is a hurdle that no one seems able to overcome. Post Freddy Gray and the consent decree, the police are policing much less and the murder rate has soared. What is the answer? The city is grappling with these issues as we speak which makes this book so gripping and topical right now.
Moore summarizes his perspectives at the end of the book with a call to action.
This book was uniquely fascinating to me because I know a lot about the physical locations and many of the political players. So it is hard for me to really know how a reader outside of the Baltimore metro area would perceive it. The chapters are very, very short, with each one focusing on a different person. This gives the book a fragmented feeling, and I wonder if that might get confusing for some readers.
And obviously, there is a political message, and not everyone is going to agree with the conclusions. Moore focuses as much on poverty as he does on racism (which in Baltimore, a city where every leadership position is held by black people makes sense), but his final chapter has an academic tone to it and really doesn't talk about how change can be made when a city with so many murders is an unattractive location for economic development. Baltimore has a terrible reputation, and for a city with so many amazing physical assets and beauty, that is a hurdle that no one seems able to overcome. Post Freddy Gray and the consent decree, the police are policing much less and the murder rate has soared. What is the answer? The city is grappling with these issues as we speak which makes this book so gripping and topical right now.