I thought The Year of Dangerous Days: Race, Riots and Refugees in Miami 1980 was a good read. I am giving it four stars.

I read 50% of this book and decided to set it aside for now. Don't get me wrong there were many things I found interesting and it is an extremely important read right now. At this season in life though it just made me fall asleep every night when I sat down to read it.

This is a DNF for me.

Sorry, but I didn’t enjoy this book. I found it to be confusing in it’s narrative. Very disjointed. I think it should be re-edited.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster/37 Ink and Netgalley for sharing this upcoming nonfiction title about one year in the life of Miami (1980). The book was very interesting and I learned a lot especially about the Mariel boat lift. I was a teenager at the time and other than hearing the name on the news, I really knew little of the details of these Cuban refugees. Along with that story we’re the stories of racial unrest and divisions in the city as well as the burgeoning drug trade. It is pretty amazing that all these things were occurring at the same time and the city was eventually able to become the tourist destination that it is now. I would recommend this book for any who is interested in true crime or American history.

The Year of Dangerous Days by Nicholas Griffith tells a story that would probably pretty easily work as a television drama. In effect, the reader is treated to three intertwined stories. 1. The death of an African American by Caucasian and Puerto Rican police officers following a police chase. 2. The rise of the cocaine trade in Miami and the consequences both in terms of finances and the human body count. 3. The injection of refugees from Cuba into Miami, which presented challenges to local and national leaders.

Griffith is very vivid so that the reader can see him/herself in Miami in 1980 and it is briskly paced. This book may have two problems: 1. can be that everything goes too fast and blends together making the book feel almost like a dream. 2. Readers may get lost in the muck of death, violence, and brutality which has a presence on virtually every page of the book and tune out.

Readers shouldn’t because it’s a very entertaining story of this trifecta of forces that tugged on a city for an entire year and ultimately helped give rise to the Miami that many of us anecdotally know today.

The time is 1980. There is an epidemic in Miami, Florida. An epidemic of violence and drugs. There is an explosion of riots between races. At the focal point of the story is the wrongful murder of an African American man and the crazy cover up that ensues by police. It was appalling to read about. I was also glued to the pages. This read more like a fiction than a non-fiction. Mainly because. I kept thinking, this couldn't have possibly happened.. could it? Could the police have really been that crooked? For anyone interested in True Crime.. this would be right up your alley. This one is for you!