THE ADDRESS BOOK What Our Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

Janina Edwards narrates this globe-trotting and highly informed work in a fluid style. Edwards acts as a tour guide who leads the listener from India to Haiti, London to Manhattan, and skillfully renders the numerous people the listener meets along the journey. Her performance deftly captures the broad interests and wide-angle lens of the author. Mast uses addresses as a magnifying glass to reveal issues of homelessness, identity, and power. Historically, for example, when Queen Maria Teresa in Vienna needed men for her armies, addresses were painted on doors. In twentieth-century Manhattan, developers created "enhanced" addresses, the practice of assigning high-end addresses to buildings in order to raise real estate prices and snob appeal. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2020]