When Crack Was King

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic “A master class in disrupting a stubborn narrative, a monumental feat for the fraught subject of addiction in Black communities.”—The Washington Post“A poignant and compelling re-examination of a tragic era in America history . . . insightful . . . and deeply moving.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Just MercyFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND VULTURE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, She Reads, Electric Lit, The Mary SueThe crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan’s war