cover image Tapping into the Wire: 
The Real Urban Crisis

Tapping into the Wire: The Real Urban Crisis

Peter L. Beilenson, M.D., and Patrick A. McGuire. Johns Hopkins Univ., $24.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-4214-0750-0

While the popular HBO series The Wire was celebrated for its nuanced look at the institutions that ran and often failed the city of Baltimore, it proves a thin organizing device for Beilenson and McGuire’s study of Baltimore’s administrative policy and war on drugs. Narrated by Beilenson, Baltimore’s health commissioner between 1992 and 2005, each chapter begins with a description of a scene or scenes from the HBO show and describes a corresponding real-life problem and related initiative that Beilenson introduced during his tenure. Although the authors’ accounts of needle exchange programs and preventative initiatives, such as Operation Safe Kids, offer informative descriptions of civic-minded leadership overcoming political hurdles, the endless list of Beilenson’s achievements soon starts to read as a litany of self-gratification. Worse, the authors’ insistence on prefacing every discussion with corresponding incidents from The Wire proves both unnecessary and increasingly strained as the book progresses, culminating in speculation that one young assassin on the show may have been afflicted with lead poisoning despite little evidence. Add in pedestrian prose that occasionally tries for strained literary significance and the result is a misguided book that nonetheless manages to offer some valuable insider insight into important municipal policy issues. (Oct.)