City of Omens

A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands

Dan Werb

$39.99

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Bloomsbury
01 July 2019

History of the Americas; Society & Social Sciences; Social issues & processes; Migration, immigration & emigration; Sexual behaviour; Addiction & therapy

For decades, American hungers sustained Tijuana. In this scientific detective story, a public health expert reveals what happens when a border city’s lifeline is brutally severed.

Despite its reputation as a carnival of vice, Tijuana was, until recently, no more or less violent than neighboring San Diego, its sister city across the border wall. But then something changed. Over the past ten years, Mexico’s third-largest city became one of the world’s most dangerous. Tijuana’s murder rate skyrocketed and produced a staggering number of female victims. Hundreds of women are now found dead in the city each year, or bound and mutilated along the highway that lines the Baja coast.

When Dan Werb began to study these murders in 2013, rather than viewing them in isolation, he discovered that they could only be understood as one symptom among many. Environmental toxins, drug overdoses, HIV transmission: all were killing women at overwhelming rates. As an epidemiologist, trained to track epidemics by mining data, Werb sensed the presence of a deeper contagion targeting Tijuana’s women. Not a virus, but some awful wrong buried in the city’s social order, cutting down its most vulnerable inhabitants from multiple directions.

Werb’s search for the ultimate causes of Tijuana’s femicide casts new light on immigration, human trafficking, addiction, and the true cost of American empire-building. It leads Werb all the way from factory slums to drug dens to the corridors of police corruption, as he follows a thread that ultimately leads to a surprising turn back over the border, looking northward.

“City of Omens is a compelling and disturbing tour of a border world that outsiders rarely see — and simultaneously, a clear guide to a field of public health that offers an essential framework for understanding how both ideas and diseases can spread.” -- MAIA SZALAVITZ,

author of Unbroken Brain

“Dan Werb combines his expertise as a trained epidemiologist with his keen discernment as an investigative journalist to depict what happens when poverty, human desperation, and unfathomable greed at the highest levels of a society mix with imperial ambition and a criminally ill-conceived policy towards drug use. It is a riveting and heartbreaking story, told with eloquence and compassion.” -- GABOR

MATÉ, MD, bestselling author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts:

Close Encounters with Addiction

“City of Omens is an urgent and needed account of a desperate problem. The perils that Mexico's women face haunt the conscience of a nation.” -- ALFREDO CORCHADO,

author of Homelands and Midnight in Mexico

By: Dan Werb
Imprint: Bloomsbury
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 574g
ISBN: 9781635572995
ISBN 10: 1635572991
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 01 July 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Dan Werb, PhD, is an assistant professor in epidemiology at the University of California San Diego and the University of Toronto. He has received major grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and other organizations. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Believer and the Walrus, where his feature The Fix on new tactics for treating injection drug use won a Canadian National Magazine Award. He is based in San Diego and Toronto.

Reviews for City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands

The author's steely focus and smooth, vivid prose make his encounters, which are often heartbreaking, come fully to life. . . . his text shines a necessary light on Tijuana's epidemic of 'femicide' and its unrivaled drug and poverty problems . . . Werb cuts through the desolation to get at the truth of the region's vexing problem. --Kirkus Reviews Werb's personal odyssey and unique approach offer valuable insights into the tragedy of femicide on the border, where communities on both sides are inescapably interdependent. A powerful addition to investigative coverage of the volatile borderland. --Booklist Dan Werb combines his expertise as a trained epidemiologist with his keen discernment as an investigative journalist to depict what happens when poverty, human desperation, and unfathomable greed at the highest levels of a society mix with imperial ambition and a criminally ill-conceived policy towards drug use. It is a riveting and heartbreaking story, told with eloquence and compassion. --Gabor Mat , MD, bestselling author of IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS City of Omens is an urgent and needed account of a desperate problem. The perils that Mexico's women face haunt the conscience of a nation. --Alfredo Corchado, author of HOMELANDS and MIDNIGHT IN MEXICO