Urban renewal destroyed Black neighborhoods across America, displacing millions of people and erasing communities built over generations. Psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove examines this destruction as a public health crisis, coining the term root shock to describe the traumatic stress that follows when one's community is demolished. Drawing on research in Pittsburgh, Newark, and other cities, she documents how displacement unraveled social networks that had sustained residents through poverty and discrimination. Fullilove, a professor of urban policy and health at The New School, combines epidemiology with oral history, interviewing people who experienced urban renewal and tracing its effects across decades. The neighborhoods targeted for demolition were often thriving despite their poverty, sustaining businesses, churches, and organizations that could not be reconstituted elsewhere. Residents were scattered to distant housing projects or left to find shelter in an unwelcoming market. The book argues that urban renewal's damage extends beyond those directly displaced to affect entire cities, which lost the social capital that dense, stable neighborhoods generated. Fullilove connects historical urban renewal to contemporary patterns of displacement through gentrification and highway construction. She calls for policies that recognize community as a public health resource deserving protection. Readers interested in urban history, public health, or racial justice will find her framework illuminating.