Show Me A Hero - Softcover

Belkin, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316088641 ISBN 13: 9780316088640

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2000

Synopsis

Not in my backyard -- that's the refrain commonly invoked by property owners who oppose unwanted development. Such words assume a special ferocity when the development in question is public housing. Lisa Belkin penetrates the prejudices, myths, and heated emotions stirred by the most recent trend in public housing as she re-creates a landmark case in riveting detail, showing how a proposal to build scattered-site public housing in middle-class neighborhoods nearly destroyed an entire city and forever changed the lives of many of its citizens.
-- Public housing projects are being torn down throughout the United States. What will take their place? Show Me a Hero explores the answer.
-- An important and compelling work of narrative nonfiction in the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground.
-- A sweeping yet intimate group portrait that assesses the effects of public policy on individual human lives.

About this title

Review:

"The pipe bomb was small as pipe bombs go, but the explosion could be heard from several blocks away--a sharp bang as rows of factory-fresh ceramic tiles shattered into a pile of razor-edged rubble. Neighbors who were drifting off to sleep sat upright, awake. Family members who were preparing for bed looked at each other first with questions, then with certainty they had the answer. 'I guess somebody is trying to blow up the new housing,' one man joked to his wife. But it wasn't a joke. That's exactly what someone was trying to do."

In 1988, when a federal judge ordered the city of Yonkers, New York, to integrate more thoroughly its low-income housing throughout the city, it set off a bitter dispute that would consume the town for the next five years. Among those caught in the controversy was the city's 28-year-old mayor, Nicholas Wasicsko, who had used the issue to his advantage during his campaign and found that he would never be able to escape it, either during or after his administration. Veteran New York Times journalist Lisa Belkin focuses not on the abstract "sides" of the integration debate, but on the people who take those sides. It's that personal perspective that makes her account most worth reading.

About the Author:

Lisa Belkin is the Senior National Correspondent for Yahoo News, covering American social issues. Prior to joining Yahoo she was a Senior Correspondent at the Huffington Post, and spent nearly thirty years at the New York Times, where she was variously a national correspondent, a medical reporter, a Contributing Writer for The New York Times Magazine, and created the Life's Work column and the Motherlode blog.

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0316088641
• ISBN 13: 9780316088640
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352