The Address Book by Deirdre Mask

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask was a book club selection at my last job. I didn’t finish it then due to life circumstances, but enjoyed the discussion with my colleagues. Recently I checked out the ebook from the library, devoured it, and will be buying a hard copy for our home.

It’s so good. If you like to read the true story of life’s little details that you may take for granted, this book is for you.

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Through a series of essays on addresses, Mask tells the story of our homes, our inequities, our empires, our priorities and our families. This book is about the consequences of an address.

An address is required for a bank account, a job application and myriad other stepping stones out of poverty and homelessness. On the flip side, addresses are also a tool of the state: “(China’s Qin Dynasty had, however, been requiring last names since the fourth century B.C. “for the purposes of taxation, forced labor, and conscription.”)”…”One of the first steps of an imperial power is to rename the roads in a way they can understand—a way that is intelligible to them.”…”In America, the British first began to number Manhattan to keep track of revolutionaries.”

Mask’s approach to the topic is readable and relatable. Each essay reveals the innate human qualities of the problems and the solutions around addresses. It also made me laugh.

“He was in his fifties, and already famous in France, perhaps the only country in the world where a literary theorist could be famous. He traveled to Japan, as one commentator has explained, “to relieve himself, for awhile at least, of the immense responsibility of being French.”

Unbelievable that I’m so excited about a book about addresses, I know. But we’re here now and I think we should all just get used to it.