Dispatches from Dystopia

Location, location, location! In "Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of Places Not Yet Forgotten," historian Kate Brown reinvents that old mantra – visiting a ruined mining town in Kazakhstan; the largest environmental Superfund site in the United States; and the industrial rustbelt of Elgin, Illinois, to see what these communities have in common. She finds hucksterism and hardy inhabitants who choose to stay despite incredibly difficult circumstances. Her examination of these desolate, seemingly ruined places and their denizens is a provocative reflection on the places we choose to call home.