Land of opportunity

the long version

Crack is the scourge of our cities, but for some the business of crack is an opportunity too good to refuse. The Chambers brothers were perhaps Detroit's most successful entrepreneurs of the eighties, and they made their fortunes by applying strict business principles to the drug trade. In this harrowing and brilliantly rendered book, William Adler gives us a story whose significance transcends the true-crime genre. Land of Opportunity is the first work of sustained narrative journalism to view America's drug epidemic within the complex social context of poverty and failed opportunity in which the American Dream still struggles to be born. Although the crack epidemic has received extensive coverage over the last decade, much of the reporting has generated more heat than light. That crack is a scourge is clear from the lurid, sensationalized stories of crack-related crime and violence and the voyeuristic sketches of a day in the life of an addict. But most accounts completely ignore why crack distribution is for so many a rational career choice.