Book
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- CENTRAL: Second Floor
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- CENTRAL: Local History
Land of opportunity : one family's quest for the American dream in the age of crack
Edition
New edition.
Publication Information
Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2021.
Physical Description
xxiii, 369 pages ; 23 cm
Summary
"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."--Publisher website.
Notes
Original edition published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1995.
"With a new afterword by the author"--Cover.
Subjects
- Drug dealers > United States > Biography.
- Drug dealers > Michigan > Detroit > History > 20th century.
- Drug traffic > Michigan > Detroit > History > 20th century.
- Crack (Drug) > Michigan > Detroit
- Detroit (Mich.) > Social conditions > 20th century.
- Detroit (Mich.) > Economic conditions > 20th century.
- Chambers, Billy Joe, 1962-
- Chambers family.