The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known--and cautiously avoided--by most of Baltimore. But this notorious ...
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Feb 03, 2012
Kinga
rated it: 
"The Corner is rooted in human desire - crude and certain and immediate. And the hard truth is that all the law enforcement in the world can't mess with desire."
I have this flaw in my character that I am extremely judgmental. I try to fight it. I try to tell myself I don't know the circumstances. I can't see the whole picture. But no matter how hard I try, there is always that voice in my head that keeps saying "why can't people just get their shit together". You More...
I have this flaw in my character that I am extremely judgmental. I try to fight it. I try to tell myself I don't know the circumstances. I can't see the whole picture. But no matter how hard I try, there is always that voice in my head that keeps saying "why can't people just get their shit together". You More...
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Mar 13, 2008
C.E.
rated it:
Books don't get much more powerful or moving than this.
The premise is simple--Baltimore Sun reporter Simon (who's lately been earning acclaim as the driving force behind HBO's "The Wire" which takes place in the same area)and Ed Burns spent a year living on or around one of the busiest drug markets in Baltimore and reports what he learned. In doing so, he tells the stories of the people who inhabit this world: street pushers, kids trying (although often not that hard) to s More...
The premise is simple--Baltimore Sun reporter Simon (who's lately been earning acclaim as the driving force behind HBO's "The Wire" which takes place in the same area)and Ed Burns spent a year living on or around one of the busiest drug markets in Baltimore and reports what he learned. In doing so, he tells the stories of the people who inhabit this world: street pushers, kids trying (although often not that hard) to s More...
Apr 08, 2008
Melissa
rated it: 
Don't follow this link if you plan to read the book & haven't, but I was pleasantly surprised after I searched for one of the characters online this morning...
A bizarre redemption tale.
The Corner is written in documentary form, with apparently 75-80% of the content being observed events in the lives of these West Baltimore residents. The focus of the books is more on the drug users than the drug sellers, which makes sense as I'm sure there aren't too many dealers out there looking t More...
A bizarre redemption tale.
The Corner is written in documentary form, with apparently 75-80% of the content being observed events in the lives of these West Baltimore residents. The focus of the books is more on the drug users than the drug sellers, which makes sense as I'm sure there aren't too many dealers out there looking t More...
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Jul 03, 2011
Jen
rated it: 
A very heavy book--figuratively and literally. At over 500 pages, I did have a little trouble with the length--I wasn't always compelled to pick it up and read more, given I was going to read about more hardship, disappointment, and misery. However, I understand why the authors wanted to give a year-in-the-life of the people they wrote about--it gives a fuller spectrum of their day-to-day lives. For those of us outside "the corner" life, this book gives a lot of intimate and personal d
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(3 people liked it)
Feb 05, 2008
Julia
rated it:
This is quite possibly one of the best books I've read! Ed Burns and David Simon undertake a journalistic approach to the traditionally anthropological method of ethnography- the descriptive documentation of a living culture. The result of over a year of living among and gaining the trust of individuals within the culture is an amazingly engrossing story of the year-in-the-life of the residents around an open-air drug market on Baltimore's west side.
Focusing on a core of approxim More...
Focusing on a core of approxim More...
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(2 people liked it)
Dec 09, 2011
Kinga highly recommends:
"The Corner is rooted in human desire - crude and certain and immediate. And the hard truth is that all the law enforcement in the world can't mess with desire."
I have this flaw in my character that I am extremely judgmental. I try to fight it. I try to tell myself I don't know the circumstances. I don't know the whole picture. But no matter how hard I try, there is always that voice in my head that keeps saying "why can't people just g More...
"The Corner is rooted in human desire - crude and certain and immediate. And the hard truth is that all the law enforcement in the world can't mess with desire."
I have this flaw in my character that I am extremely judgmental. I try to fight it. I try to tell myself I don't know the circumstances. I don't know the whole picture. But no matter how hard I try, there is always that voice in my head that keeps saying "why can't people just g More...
Mar 23, 2011
Mariel
rated it:
Ed Burns and David Simon's The Corner gave me a lot to think about. I really could not stop living in it, or talking about it to anyone who would pretend to listen to me.
Their journalistic approach of living with their subjects (in no way are the people within this account "subjects". I'm not good with word choices) for a year and being able to not leave their own footprint in was fascinating to me, for one thing. Not that it isn't hard to read about it. Well, it's always More...
Their journalistic approach of living with their subjects (in no way are the people within this account "subjects". I'm not good with word choices) for a year and being able to not leave their own footprint in was fascinating to me, for one thing. Not that it isn't hard to read about it. Well, it's always More...
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(3 people liked it)
Apr 21, 2010
Todd
rated it:
Two writers spend a year hanging out and observing a West Baltimore neighborhood that is almost completely given over to open-air drug markets. It's sort of an urban "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" with fewer linking verbs.
One of the writers is an ex-cop schoolteacher named Ed Burns, and the other is David Simon, writer of the excellent Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and creator of The Wire. In a lot of ways The Corner is the flip side of Homicide, showing Baltimore More...
One of the writers is an ex-cop schoolteacher named Ed Burns, and the other is David Simon, writer of the excellent Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and creator of The Wire. In a lot of ways The Corner is the flip side of Homicide, showing Baltimore More...
May 26, 2009
Chris
rated it:
This is just as enthrallingly written as the other David Simon book I've read, Homicide, but instead of writing about heroes (as flawed as any are), this book covers what must be counted among the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore, and the people who live in it. Simon takes great pains to render a sympathetic but honest portrait of the people he describes, and the rise and fall of characters' hopes for a better life is a genuine source of suspense. And it's not a complete downer of a tale, either
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Sep 09, 2011
Michael
rated it:
This is a complex book. I picked it up since I read an article by David Simon on how his tv shows offer no nuance like his books do. I was curious how much more his books could offer. They offer a lot.
The corner is a non fiction account. The authors describe it as a work of journalism. They sat around a bad neighborhood in Baltimore and watched the people as they tried to understand the ecosystem. The book is successful at showing how trapped and how little choice many of the resid More...
The corner is a non fiction account. The authors describe it as a work of journalism. They sat around a bad neighborhood in Baltimore and watched the people as they tried to understand the ecosystem. The book is successful at showing how trapped and how little choice many of the resid More...
May 29, 2010
Stephen
rated it:
I have the unique perspective of having lived on "The Corner" for a year, and in the neighborhood for two more. My review might be biased because I don't have the luxury of distancing myself from the characters or saying "such and such was probably embellished for dramatic flair."
The characters in The Corner are real people struggling to live "normal" lives in the face of circumstances that 99% of us would consider absolutely unacceptable. Burns and Simon stay with each character lon More...
The characters in The Corner are real people struggling to live "normal" lives in the face of circumstances that 99% of us would consider absolutely unacceptable. Burns and Simon stay with each character lon More...
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Apr 13, 2010
Sarah
rated it:
A sad and true piece of journalism, worth reading for the insight, though not exactly a page-turner. By the guys who brought you "The Wire," so the expectations of brutal realism are high, and met. This focuses, instead of on the dealers and cops, on the dope fiends who make it all possible. The book manages to escape being overly sympathetic towards the flawed humans who populate this neighborhood, while slowly building a case for how inevitably trapped most of them are. I could h
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Apr 07, 2010
Jean Marie
rated it: 
If I learned anything from this book it's that drug abuse is booooring. Seriously. It's like going to a party sober. It's no fun and all your friends act like assholes. Boring.
My main concerns with this book were thematic and so ingrained within the structure that I had difficultly overlooking them. For starters, it's too long. There was no need for this book to prattle on for over 500 pages. Several passages that went on for pages about the boys under-16 basketball team. One passag More...
My main concerns with this book were thematic and so ingrained within the structure that I had difficultly overlooking them. For starters, it's too long. There was no need for this book to prattle on for over 500 pages. Several passages that went on for pages about the boys under-16 basketball team. One passag More...
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(1 person liked it)
Jan 09, 2010
Karen
rated it:
Reading The Corner I felt a powerful desire to reconnect with those in my life whose lives had some of the same elements of the lives in this book. I’ve spent a lot of time with the book in my lap, not reading, just reminiscing about certain people and places. I am unnerved by it, this nostalgia for... what? Proximity to pain, poverty, violence, racism, addiction, and hopelessness? Don’t misunderstand me; I don’t feel like “helping.” Starting in junior high the social-worky desire to help p
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Dec 29, 2007
Christine
rated it:
Read this because I had recently gotten hooked on the Wire. Working in Baltimore makes the story seem that much more real. Its sad we live in times where there is so much prosperity yet people still resort to drugs, crime, more drugs, having babies. It doesn't have to be this way does it?
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Mar 20, 2009
Luke
rated it:
I was expecting this book to be powerful, but I was still unprepared for it. It's hard for me to say it was the best book I've ever read; I don't think such superficial comparisons are a fair way to treat any book.
What I can say is that more than once I found myself on the subway reading the book and fighting (unsuccessfully) to hold back tears so as not to make a spectacle of myself in public. Those episodes were nothing compared to my outpouring of emotion upon finishing it, howev More...
What I can say is that more than once I found myself on the subway reading the book and fighting (unsuccessfully) to hold back tears so as not to make a spectacle of myself in public. Those episodes were nothing compared to my outpouring of emotion upon finishing it, howev More...
Jan 06, 2009
Eileen
rated it:
Simon and Burns follow several people who live, work, and find ways to get by in one of Baltimore's open air drug markets. Here, women are more present than in their later work on 'The Wire.'
Throwing the vast, and vastly damaging and futile hypocrisy of the so-called war on drugs into relief, they write "Here on Fayette, every fiend and tout and runner understands; they know with a certainty to rival the faith of any religion that no one will miss his daily blast. Against tha More...
Throwing the vast, and vastly damaging and futile hypocrisy of the so-called war on drugs into relief, they write "Here on Fayette, every fiend and tout and runner understands; they know with a certainty to rival the faith of any religion that no one will miss his daily blast. Against tha More...
Dec 31, 2011
Marguerite
rated it: 
I could only make it to page 138 (of 543) of this bad boy. There is some tenacious reporting here. The authors devoted an impressive amount of time to laying the groundwork and observing the people, events and landscape. But, that doesn't automatically make for stellar journalism.
Good reporters take note of the sights, sounds and smells of a scene. They also exercise judgment when unloading their notebooks. This book needed an editor. The amount of detail is tedious. There's a great More...
Good reporters take note of the sights, sounds and smells of a scene. They also exercise judgment when unloading their notebooks. This book needed an editor. The amount of detail is tedious. There's a great More...
Oct 21, 2009
Jesse
rated it:
A mighty book-- easily the best thing I've ever read on the subject of addiction, as well as the lives, souls, and families of drug addicts. Also the best thing I've read about the central place of the drug economy at the centre of American urban poverty, and the manner by which it remains there as the result of an interconnected web of systemic forces (political, racial, social, etc.) that few to none who live as part of it ever have the luxury of affecting. A true, real, unvarnished story abou
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Sep 07, 2011
Nigel
rated it:
A stupendous book. This is not fiction: the characters are real; the events described in the book are real; the tragedy is real. If you think you know anything about drugs or you want to know anything about drugs then you should read this book. The co-authors immersed themselves into a West Baltimore community for a year and through this book have recounted what they witnessed. As you read it you feel you can see, you can touch the characters, such is the vividness with which they are described.
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Feb 12, 2011
Telly
rated it:
This is a book that I wanted to hate because it, when I was living in Baltimore, permeated so much of how the city was defined, especially by outsiders. Of course, it wasn't the book per se, but the reinterpretation that aired on HBO and, subsequently, "Homocide."
Truthfully, though, I did enjoy this book in as much as you can enjoy reading about the intimacy of real people's inner city struggles. Knowing it's true, makes it a harder read. Out of the seven or ten heroine ad More...
Truthfully, though, I did enjoy this book in as much as you can enjoy reading about the intimacy of real people's inner city struggles. Knowing it's true, makes it a harder read. Out of the seven or ten heroine ad More...
Feb 27, 2009
Louis
rated it:
An incredible journalistic feat. The depth of the reporting makes it hard to believe that it's a work of non-fiction. I'll never think about inner-city America or all of its cliched issues (drug trade, teen pregnancy, gun violence, welfare) in the same way. Simon and Burns make a devastatingly convincing case that no amount of money can fix the rotten cores of our cities if we continue to allocate the funds to the same failed policies and programs.
A terribly depressing book -- but it's More...
A terribly depressing book -- but it's More...
Sep 26, 2011
Colin
rated it:
David Simon and Ed Burns' The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood may not be as good as Simon's stellar solo effort, Homicide: A Year On the Killing Streets, but it's still a harrowing and intriguing account of one of Baltimore's drug corners.
Given that Simon's Homicide is my favorite book of the last five years, it's hard for me not to compare the two. Like Homicide, the authors of The Corner are invisible as they describe the lives of those around the interse More...
Given that Simon's Homicide is my favorite book of the last five years, it's hard for me not to compare the two. Like Homicide, the authors of The Corner are invisible as they describe the lives of those around the interse More...
Sep 07, 2010
Tanya
rated it:
This book a few surprises for me. I saw the HBP mini-series first and since it was set in my hometown of Baltimore I was very interested in reading a little more about these characters. I was surprised at the amount of research went into writing this book, the author David Simon provides a sociologist's POV in trying to explain how the drug epidemic not only affects Fran and her family but how it affects the entire city of Baltimore. It can be a difficult read but it is well worth the time... If
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Jan 16, 2012
John
rated it:
A book. A good book. A book of honesty. A book of opinions. A book of observations. A tough book.
What is happening to our inner cities? How have we lost this center of our national identity? How can good people make a difference in the hood, when there are people willing to burn you out and then hide behind a charade of "prove it mf".
Continually I ask myself where does personal responsibility and society's needs balance out? Is there such a thing as Soci More...
What is happening to our inner cities? How have we lost this center of our national identity? How can good people make a difference in the hood, when there are people willing to burn you out and then hide behind a charade of "prove it mf".
Continually I ask myself where does personal responsibility and society's needs balance out? Is there such a thing as Soci More...
Nov 18, 2010
Dup
rated it:
I had a strange time of it with this book. When I first started it I ripped through the first 200 pages in less than a week. Then things slowed down considerably. The writing is incredibly strong and I liked how it balanced this intricate and detailed journalism with these sociological and historical breaks/rants. But it's also clear at a certain point that things are not going to change for these people anytime soon as there's still 300 pages to go. But I did finish it. I do want to see the HBO
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Aug 02, 2011
mark
rated it:
The Corner is a piece of ground, located at the intersection of cross streets with good sightlines, in an inner-city neighborhood – a territory – that is valuable to whomever controls it. The Corner is the center of an economic machine that produces a living for those who engage the activity – the sale of illegal drugs. Some people get rich and others make a very good living—as much as $2,000 a week for a “slinger”; and then less for all the others who are involved down to the “lookouts.” Consum
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Jun 05, 2011
Ken
rated it:
In diesem Ziegelstein von einem Buch (628 Seiten) geht es um die Drogenkultur eines Brennpunktviertels in Baltimore, Maryland (aufgrund der hohen Mordrate auch "Bodymore, Murderland" genannt). Reporter David Simon und Ex-Polizist Ed Burns haben ein Jahr lang als "embedded journalists" den Alltag einer zerrütteten Familie begleitet. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die drogenabhängigen Eltern und ihr dealender Sohn sowie Menschen aus ihrem Umfeld: Junkies, Sozialarbeiter, Polizisten.
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Sep 21, 2010
JW
rated it:
It's time I admit an uncomfortable truth. David Simon, amazing showrunner that he is, is not all things to all people. Even to people who on the whole agree with him.
This book was not written so that people could read it as much as so Simon could get something off his chest. Or more likely, stick it in someone's eye. I have always maintained that polemics were weak sauce in fiction, I have to admit the case is the same in non-fiction.
"Inner City Neighborhood" More...
This book was not written so that people could read it as much as so Simon could get something off his chest. Or more likely, stick it in someone's eye. I have always maintained that polemics were weak sauce in fiction, I have to admit the case is the same in non-fiction.
"Inner City Neighborhood" More...
Apr 15, 2011
Erin
rated it:
why little mike? why not marvin? why not her, for that matter? how is it that some people start to stumble and then catch themselves? how does anyone find it possible to tear himself to shreds time and time again, and then, against any sensible expectation, find strength enough to piece himself back together?
this took me forever to get through since i started working. oops. as everyone is aware, david simon is a god in my world, so this tome by him and ed burns was bound to be read b More...
this took me forever to get through since i started working. oops. as everyone is aware, david simon is a god in my world, so this tome by him and ed burns was bound to be read b More...
