Stuck

How did America cease to be the land of opportunity?

LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.

Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for two hundred years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity.

In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs’ efforts to protect her vision of the West Village—has raised housing prices, deepened political divides, emboldened bigots, and trapped generations of people in poverty. Appelbaum shows us that these problems have a common explanation: people can’t move as readily as they used to. They are, in a word, stuck.

Cutting through more than a century of mythmaking, Stuck tells a vivid, surprising story of the people and ideas that caused our economic and social sclerosis and lays out common-sense ways to get Americans moving again.

Standard and Primary covers are widely available through general retailers. They often have higher print runs and can be cheaper, especially during sales.

In contrast, Direct Market (DM) and variant covers are primarily sold in comic shops. DM editions tend to have more limited availability and may be more valuable to collectors.

The main differences lie in artwork style, availability, price, and collector appeal. Ultimately, the choice between standard and variant covers depends on personal preference, budget, and individual collecting goals.

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The choice between these formats often depends on personal preference, budget, and collecting goals. Omnibus and OHC editions offer larger artwork and more content but at a higher price, while TPs provide a more affordable way to collect complete story arcs