Jessie Singer is a journalist whose writing appears in BuzzFeed, the Village Voice, The Awl, New York magazine, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She currently serves as senior Senior Strategist and Head Writer at Transportation Alternatives, the editor in chief of Reclaim Magazine, and the founding editor of the international Vision Zero Cities Journal. She studied journalism at the Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism at New York University, and under the wing of the late investigative journalist Wayne Barrett.
In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn of the century factories and coal mines to today’s urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer proves that what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of “accidents”—saving lives and holding the guilty to account.
Reviews
“[A] searing, deeply researched account…An eye-opening, urgent book that demands an end to inequality as a matter of life and death.” —Kirkus (starred review)
"Lucid and well researched, this is an eye-opening call for rethinking the nature of accidents." —Publishers Weekly
"A brilliant and alarming analysis, imbued with empathy and appropriate rage, of a tragic, far-too-common problem.” —Booklist (starred review)
A portion of book proceeds will directly support Transportation Alternatives