Money Rock: A Family's Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South Contributor(s): Kelley, Pam (Author) |
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ISBN: 1620973278 ISBN-13: 9781620973271 Publisher: New Press OUR PRICE: $24.29 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: September 2018 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Criminals & Outlaws - Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - African American & Black - Social Science | Discrimination & Race Relations |
Dewey: B |
LCCN: 2018020705 |
Physical Information: 1.4" H x 5.9" W x 8.3" (1.00 lbs) 288 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Locality - Charlotte-Gastonia, N.C. - Geographic Orientation - North Carolina - Chronological Period - 1950-1999 - Chronological Period - 21st Century |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: "An ambitious look at the cost of urban gentrification." --Atlanta-Journal Constitution "Kelley could have written a fine book about Charlotte's drug trade in the '80s and '90s, filled with shoot-outs and flashy jewelry. What she accomplishes with Money Rock, however, is far more laudable." --Charlotte Magazine "Pam Kelley knows a good story when she sees one--and Money Rock is a hell of a story. . . like a New South version of The Wire." --Shelf Awareness Meet Money Rock--young, charismatic, and Charlotte's flashiest coke dealer--in a riveting social history with echoes of Ghettoside and Random Family Meet Money Rock. He's young. He's charismatic. He's generous, often to a fault. He's one of Charlotte's most successful cocaine dealers, and that's what first prompted veteran reporter Pam Kelley to craft this riveting social history--by turns action-packed, uplifting, and tragic--of a striving African American family, swept up and transformed by the 1980s cocaine epidemic. The saga begins in 1963 when a budding civil rights activist named Carrie gives birth to Belton Lamont Platt, eventually known as Money Rock, in a newly integrated North Carolina hospital. Pam Kelley takes readers through a shootout that shocks the city, a botched FBI sting, and a trial with a judge known as Maximum Bob. When the story concludes more than a half century later, Belton has redeemed himself. But three of his sons have met violent deaths and his oldest, fresh from prison, struggles to make a new life in a world where the odds are stacked against him. This gripping tale, populated with characters both big-hearted and flawed, shows how social forces and public policies--racism, segregation, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration--help shape individual destinies. Money Rock is a deeply American story, one that will leave readers reflecting on the near impossibility of making lasting change, in our lives and as a society, until we reckon with the sins of our past. |
Contributor Bio(s): Kelley, Pam: - A former reporter for the Charlotte Observer, Pam Kelley has won honors from the National Press Club and the Society for Features Journalism. She contributed to a subprime mortgage exposé that was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She lives in North Carolina. |