LAND OF OPPORTUNITY: One Family’s Quest for...

LAND OF OPPORTUNITY: One Family’s Quest for the American Dream in the Age of Crack by William M. Adler (Plume/Penguin: $13.95, 415 pp.). Billy Joe, Larry, Willie and Otis Chambers realized their hometown in Lee County, Ark., offered nothing to young African Americans but dead-end jobs and poverty. Arriving in Detroit at the beginning of the crack epidemic, they built a multimillion-dollar drug empire, which the FBI eventually seized.

Adler sees their chilling story not as an aberration but as a result of the limited opportunities for minorities in late 20th century America: “Until there are more attractive and practical options for young people mired in urban and rural ghettos, until their life prospects amount to more than serving or cleaning up after other people, it takes little reflection to see that selling drugs and gang-banging will continue to be rational career choices.”