Blighted is a powerful narrative about the decades-long decay and remarkable two-year reinvention of Summerdale, an aging apartment community located in one of Atlanta’s grittiest corridors. From burnt-out, mold-infested buildings to traumatized classrooms, Blighted unfolds in the voices of ruthless drug dealers, phantom tenants, fearless landlords, the working poor, educators, and visionary local leaders. After purchasing the property from an...

"A mayor's inspirational story of a Midwest city that has become nothing less than a blueprint for the future of American renewal. Once described by the Washington Post as "the most interesting mayor you've never heard of," Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-six-year-old Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has improbably emerged as one of the nation's most visionary politicians. First elected in 2011, Buttigieg left a successful business career to move...

Fifth-grader Jerome Barnes of Shoney Flats is exploring the town junkyard when he finds a strange mechanical robot-creature named Arkie who is made of a collection of spare parts, but seems remarkably alive--and when Arkie shows him the city that exists beneath the junkyard Jerome realizes that he must find a way to save his friend and the junkyard that the town wants removed.