Eliza Griswold examines the fracking boom in her book “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America.” In an essay for the New York Times, Griswold addresses a concept called “the resource curse” in her book. In her essay, she asserts that the subjects of her book, who live in a resource-rich part of the rural United States, suffer from many of the same structural pressures and disadvantages as people living in countries that most Americans think of as less developed.
[Funding for this project was provided by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and the Park Foundation.]