The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power is a wonderfully written collection of stories about the power and identity of street addresses. Author Deirdre Mask’s collection about the role addresses and place plays in the past, present, and future is enlightening and at times powerful and moving. I especially enjoyed reading about how some of the more off-the-wall street names that grace various parts of our world were identified and placed.
The concept of address and place is powerful. I live in an area that recently went through a debate over a street name change to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (by the way, Mask has a chapter that covers King and his name being lent to streets throughout the world). That debate was at times fierce and heated before the town compromised with naming a street in honor of King while maintaining the original street name. The debate of renaming streets is fierce at times, and Mask spends much of her book covering how municipalities around the world deal with that topic.
Where place goes in the future, especially in a world that’s relatively more mobile for many, remains to be seen. Mask covers some of these possibilities for how place and address identity may change. If you have an interest in geography or history, this book is definitely worth reading.
MY RATING - 4.5
