Toxic Debt

“[Josiah Rector] has written a book that advances two major interventions. First, it pushes back the environmental justice movement’s genesis to midcentury union organizing. Second, and just as significantly, it firmly connects the effects of debt and austerity—that is to say, capitalism—to environmental racism. . . . Toxic Debt is an outstanding book . . . relentlessly clear-eyed in its focus on contemporary injustice and resistance.”—Scott W. Stern, New York Review of Books

“A major achievement within the fields of environmental and urban history, and contemporary American history more broadly. By showing how local, national, and global forces created a series of hazards in people’s homes and workplaces, culminating in a horrible (and ongoing) crisis, [Toxic Debt] provides a new model for understanding and explaining our current environmental challenges, as well as their causes and consequences.”—Journal of American History

“An outstanding book examining multiple issues of environmental justice in Detroit. . . .  Alongside the issues, Rector highlights the story of the many people involved in environmental justice activism, critically examining successes and failures in their efforts to bring about change. . . . Highly recommended.”—CHOICE

“A must-read for anyone doing work on the environment, sociology, public health, policy, or labor in Detroit and beyond . . . . accessible and important for wide-reaching audiences, including activists, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars.”—Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

“An outstanding book . . . [that] fills in numerous historiographical gaps by highlighting the outsized role that environmental struggles have played in shaping Detroit’s past and present. Its original yet accessible contributions to multiple fields of inquiry ought to make it necessary reading for both academics and laypersons.”—American Historical Review

“A dense, deeply researched history of Detroit’s water disasters. . . . Rector draws on dozens of oral history interviews and extensive archival research to tell in relatable terms what is likely the most comprehensive history of Detroit’s environmental justice movement to date.”—Early Learning Nation

“Josiah Rector’s history of environmental justice in Detroit is breathtaking in its ambition and scope. Integrating environmental justice, urban history, and political economy, Rector lays out how environmental inequality came to be, as a confluence of white segregationists working with capitalists in industry, finance, and real estate at the expense of workers and communities. This dazzling debut is extensively researched, innovative, and a must-read for those interested in environmental justice, labor history, and contemporary problems that continue to land particularly hard on Black, Brown, and poor bodies and communities in Detroit and beyond.”—Julie Sze, author of Sustainability: Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power

“Toxic Debt is a vital record of a decades-long war against descendants of enslaved Africans who have fought to make the city of Detroit their home. Josiah Rector documents with disturbing clarity how those who fled to Detroit to escape southern racism became the targets of labor exploitation, environmental abuse, mass water shutoffs, and attacks on their democratic rights. Black Detroit has been marked for expulsion from the city because it is a community that has never been part of the corporate vision of a new kind of Detroit. What most distinguishes the book is its account of Black Detroit’s unrelenting, determined, and principled resistance.”—Mark P. Fancher, ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project Attorney

“Toxic Debt is the best book on the history of Detroit in decades. Effectively merging the history of environmental justice, African Americans, labor, social movements, public policy, and business, Josiah Rector delivers a timely and in-depth exploration of American capitalism and urban development in Detroit.”—David Goldberg, Wayne State University

“Both rich in detail and analytically sophisticated, this book makes a major contribution to the scholarship on organized labor’s role in urban environmental justice activism.”—Ellen Griffith Spears, University of Alabama.