The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns (1997, Non Fiction) is a tome of a nonfiction novel, leaving me to wonder how many pages must a novel be before you consider it to be a tome? How do you go about reading such a volume? This novel was 543 pages and took me twenty- four days to read. The only rule I had in tackling it was to read a bit of it each day. This novel is broken into the four seasons. The premise is simple– former Baltimore Sun reporter Simon (the driving force behind HBO’s “The Wire”, which takes place in the same area) and reporting partner Ed Burns (formerly employed by both the Baltimore City Police and the Baltimore school district) spent a year living on or around one of the busiest drug markets in Baltimore. They simply report what they see. In doing so, they relate the stories of the people who inhabit this world. The narrative is occasionally broken up by Simon and Burns’ musings about the war on drugs. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, it’s hard to disagree with their belief that the war has failed, at least in Baltimore. The Corner reads like a tragic novel, one that offers hope we will eventually end this “war on the underclass.” This novel was so powerful that in 2000 it was made into an award-winning HBO six-part miniseries, which is just as powerful and moving as the novel.