When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era

"As a Black man who grew up during the crack epidemic, author Donovan X. Ramsey watched firsthand as the drug lay waste to his community – but he never understood why it happened. In When Crack Was King, Ramsey reevaluates the era by focusing on the stories of four people who lived through it. Along the way, he makes a convincing case that government policies criminalized what was essentially a public health crisis, and he busts some of the most pernicious media-generated myths of the epidemic – including the much ballyhooed threat of the “crack baby.”"