Land of Opportunity: One Family's Quest for the American Dream in the Age of Crack

Land of Opportunity: One Family's Quest for the American Dream in the Age of Crack

By William M Adler

Paperback
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Part true crime, part work of urban sociology, Land of Opportunity is a meticulously researched account of the rise and fall of the Chambers brothers, who ran a multi-million-dollar crack cocaine operation in Detroit in the 1980s. Descended from Arkansas sharecroppers, BJ, Larry, and Willie Chambers moved to Detroit seeking economic opportunity, and built a successful drug empire by applying strict business principles to their trade; their business grossed an estimated $55 million annually until the brothers were sent to prison in 1989. Reading the Chambers brothers in the context of the fall of the Detroit auto-industry and its impact on the city's economy and residents, Land of Opportunity demonstrates how for the Chambers brothers, crack dealing was a rational career choice; and through the Chambers brothers' story, Adler provides bottom-up history of late Second Great Migration, deindustrialization, the War on Drugs, and crack era in both Detroit and the United States.

Details

Publish date October 11, 2021
Publisher University of Michigan Press
Format Paperback
Pages 394
Language Eng
ISBN 9780472038633
047203863X

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