Join us for a lively discussion of The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity Race Wealth and Power by Deirdre Mask on Tuesday May 28th at 6:00 PM. The title is available digitally as an ebook through Libby or you may place a hold and pick up a print copy at the library. New members are always welcome!
"An exuberant work of popular history: the story of how streets got their names and houses their numbers and why something as seemingly mundane as an address can save lives or enforce power. When most people think about street addresses if they think of them at all it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won't get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. Addresses arose out of a grand Enlightenment project to name and number the streets but they are also a way for people to be identified and tracked by those in power. As Deirdre Mask explains the practice of numbering houses was popularized in eighteenth-century Vienna by Maria Theresa leader of the Hapsburg Empire to tax her subjects and draft them into her military. In many parts of the world your address can reveal your race and class causing them to be a shorthand for snobbery or discrimination. In this wide-ranging and remarkable book Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr. the wayfinding means of ancient Romans how Nazis haunt the streets of modern Germany and why numbered streets dominate in America but not in Europe. The flipside of having an address is not having one and we see what that means for millions of people today including those who live in the slums of Kolkata on the streets of London or in post-earthquake Haiti. Filled with fascinating people and histories The Address Book illuminates the complex and sometimes hidden stories behind street names and their power to name to hide to decide who counts who doesn't-and why"-- Provided by publisher.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Seekonk Public Library, 410 Newman Ave., Seekonk, United States
