Amity and Prosperity

What turns a small-town mom into an environmental activist and whistle-blower?

Stacey Haney is a nurse and single mother struggling to raise her kids and keep up a small farm in Amity, Pennsylvania. When the fracking boom comes to town, she becomes intrigued by reports of lucrative natural gas leases in her neighbors' mailboxes, and she strikes a deal with a Texas-based energy company in hopes of making a profit off her family land. But when mysterious illnesses begin to afflict her children, and domestic animals and pets start to die, she becomes an unlikely, outspoken critic who launches her own investigation into corporate wrongdoing.

Amity and Prosperity, a new book by 2008 New America National Fellow Eliza Griswold, draws on seven years of immersive reporting that gets to the heart of the fracking debate—and to the polarizing forces at work in twenty-first century rural America. The book digs deep into the edge of Appalachia where a community long suspicious of insiders faces wrenching new questions about who is responsible for their fate, and for redressing it: the faceless corporations poisoning their land? The environmentalists who fail to see their economic distress? A federal government failing on its mandate to protect its citizens?

Join New America's Fellows Program for a conversation with Eliza Griswold and George Packer on what happens when an imperiled town faces a crisis of values—and how a swell of citizen resistance fights back in an unequal age.

PARTICIPANTS

George Packer
Staff writer, The New Yorker
ASU Future of War Fellow, New America

Seating is available on a first come, first served basis. Copies of Amity and Prosperity will be available for purchase. Follow the conversation online using #AmityandProsperity and by following @NewAmericaNYC.