Mark Twain Was Right: The 2001 Cincinnati Riots

Description

Moore’s book is an engaging work of journalism—as-narrative-comic, tracing the riot’s genesis from the senseless police killing of a 19-year-old black man to the man’s funeral six days later. What results is a tumultuous cocktail of nonviolent civil disobedience, frustration-fueled looting, and further police violence. Interviews with people of varying perspectives—activists, community leaders, a looter, bystanders, etc—weave a tale of inner-city community coming together. Here we witness a city boiling over, and all the political grossness, interpersonal rallying, and rampant destruction that entails. At 96 pages, Mark Twain Was Right is an important chapter of American history, a story often overlooked and generally misreported, a piece of our lineage that must not be forgotten.