Backroom Deals in Our Backyards: How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities—and the Local Heroes Fighting Back

A groundbreaking look at how ordinary people are fighting back against their local and state governments to keep their communities safe, by an award-winning journalist. 

“We ignore the use of secrecy at the state and local level at our peril.” —from the introduction 

A work of riveting narrative nonfiction based on years of original reporting, Backroom Deals in Our Backyards tells the story of five “accidental activists”—people from across the United States who started questioning why their local and state governments didn’t protect them from issues facing their communities and why there was a frightening lack of transparency surrounding the way these issues were resolved.