A review by sde
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by Edward Burns, David Simon

3.0

This book was an in-depth look at life in an inner city neighborhood. It was interesting but got very repetitive. I think the author could have cut out a great deal and still have gotten the message across. After reading again and again of Gary shooting heroin or DeAndre skipping school, I just got bored, rather than sympathetic. In my experience in a much smaller city, there are more people trying to do good and hold the neighborhood together than is depicted in this book. Maybe once you get to a certain scale it becomes more intractable.

In books like this I always wonder how the author got so much information from folks in such detail. Would be curious to know more about the author's methods of investigating and talking to folks.

I did appreciate the insight into why the people around the "Corner" behave in the ways they do. They are not just self-destructive. For instance, for girls in this situation, it makes sense for them to have babies young, and all the handing out of birth control will not do much.