And I’m not about to conduct a historical past class right here by going over floor — the lack of business and union jobs, white flight, the erosion of the tax base, the focus of poverty — lined in quite a few columns through the years. However I’ll suggest three books: “Baltimore: A Political Historical past,” by Johns Hopkins professor emeritus Matthew Crenson; “Not In My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Formed a Nice American Metropolis,” by former Solar colleague Antero Pietila; and new this yr, “The Black Butterfly: The Dangerous Politics of Race and Area in America,” by Lawrence T. Brown, former affiliate professor at Morgan State College.
