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Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope
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About Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope
Product Description NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With stark poignancy and political dispassion Tightrope addresses the crisis in working-class America while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. This must-read book from the authors of Half the Sky “shows how we can and must do better” (Katie Couric). "A deft and uniquely credible exploration of rural America, and of other left-behind pockets of our country. One of the most important books I've read on the state of our disunion."—Tara Westover, author of Educated Drawing us deep into an “other America,” the authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the people with whom Kristof grew up, in rural Yamhill, Oregon. It’s an area that prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been devastated in the last few decades as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About a quarter of the children on Kristof’s old school bus died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents. While these particular stories unfolded in one corner of the country, they are representative of many places the authors write about, ranging from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to New York and Virginia. With their superb, nuanced reportage, Kristof and WuDunn have given us a book that is both riveting and impossible to ignore. Review “A deft and uniquely credible exploration of rural America, and of other left-behind pockets of our country. One of the most important books I've read on the state of our disunion.” —Tara Westover, author of Educated “Tightrope is a heroic, harrowing, and at times tender, look at the high wire act that is survival for too many people today. Kristof and WuDunn know there are no easy solutions here, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take action, whether by pushing for better policies, or changing our own attitudes. This book will shake you—it did me—and that is the point.” —Bono “This is a must-read that will shake you to your core. It’s a Dante-esque tour of a forgotten America, told partly through the kids who rode on Kristof’s old school bus in rural Oregon. A quarter are now dead, and others are homeless, in prison or struggling with drugs. They made bad choices, but so did America, in ways that hold back our entire country. Tightrope shows how we can and must do better.” —Katie Couric “ Tightrope catches what many analyses miss about struggling communities across color lines: an undercurrent of self-hatred, in which people blame themselves for bad outcomes and are loath to ask for a ‘handout’. . . . [The authors’] analysis of our country’s class problem reads as lived understanding. . . . Tightrope’s greatest strength is its exaltation of the common person’s voice, bearing expert witness to troubles that selfish power has wrought.” —Sarah Smarsh, The New York Times Book Review “[ Tightrope] may well be the timeliest and most engrossing work of nonfiction this year.” —Newsweek “Shocking. . . . Tightrope is a convincing argument that it's not too late to change the course of the nation. It's also an agonizing account of how apathy and cruelty have turned America into a nightmare for many of its less fortunate citizens. . . . It's difficult to read, and it was surely difficult to write, but it feels—now more than ever—deeply necessary.” —Michael Schaub, NPR"Powerful. . . . Kristof and WuDunn record how Americans turn barbaric toward those who struggle personally and financially. . . . [ Tightrope illuminates] the disparagement that the poor confront in a prosperous America." —Alissa Quart, The Washington Post " Tightrope manages to chronicle our worst while reminding us of our best. . . [Kristof and WuDunn's] interweaving of the stories of their friends from Yamhill caught in the webs of misfortune, is . . . deeply humane. . . . These are whole people, not statistics." —Allison Pugh, Harvard Magazine “While [Kristof and WuDunn] cover policy failures of the last half-century, they also affirm that
