Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed - David Farber

Written by David Farber
Read by Kerry Shale
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps

Crack
Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed
By: David Farber
Narrated by: Kerry Shale
Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 12-26-19
Language: English
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Publisher’s Summary

A shattering account of the crack cocaine years from award-winning American historian David Farber, Crack tells the story of the young men who bet their lives on the rewards of selling “rock” cocaine, the people who gave themselves over to the crack pipe, and the often-merciless authorities who incarcerated legions of African Americans caught in the crack cocaine underworld.

Based on interviews, archival research, judicial records, underground videos, and prison memoirs, Crack explains why, in a de-industrializing America in which market forces ruled and entrepreneurial risk-taking was celebrated, the crack industry was a lucrative enterprise for the “Horatio Alger boys” of their place and time. These young, predominately African American entrepreneurs were profit-sharing partners in a deviant, criminal form of economic globalization. Hip Hop artists often celebrated their exploits but overwhelmingly, Americans - across racial lines - did not. Crack takes a hard look at the dark side of late 20th-century capitalism.

©2019 David Farber (P)2019 Cambridge University Press