Book Talk- Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises

Come join Jodie Adams Kirshner and Michael Eric Dyson as they discuss Kirshner's new book Broke. 

Covering timely questions like "what do the spending cuts and limited resources do to the lives of city residents?" The book explores the answer through the lives of seven Detroiters as they navigate life during and after their city's bankruptcy. 

From the publisher: "Reggie loses his savings trying to make a habitable home for his family. Cindy fights drug use, prostitution, and dumping on her block. Lola commutes two hours a day to her suburban job. For them, financial issues are mired within the larger ramifications of poor urban policies, restorative negligence on the state and federal level and—even before the decision to declare Detroit bankrupt in 2013—the root causes of a city’s fiscal demise."

About the Author 

Jodie Adams Kirshner is a research professor at New York University. Previously on the law faculty at Cambridge University, she also teaches bankruptcy law at Columbia Law School. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, past term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a technical advisor to the Bank for International Settlements. She received a prestigious multi-year grant from the Kresge Foundation to research Broke. She also was a Fulbright Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford. 

About the Moderator

Dr. Michael Eric Dyson is a Georgetown University sociology professor, a New York Times contributing opinion writer, and a contributing editor of The New Republic, and of ESPN's The Undefeated website.