Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

by Wudunn, Sheryl
ISBN: 9780525655084
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Overview

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of the acclaimed, best-selling Half the Sky now issue a plea--deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans--to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure.

With stark poignancy and political dispassion, Tightrope draws us deep into an "other America." The authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural Yamhill, Oregon, 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 one-quarter of these children died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents. And 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. But here too are stories about resurgence, among them: Annette Dove, who has devoted her life to helping the teenagers of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as they navigate the chaotic reality of growing up poor; Daniel McDowell, of Baltimore, whose tale of opioid addiction and recovery suggests that there are viable ways to solve our nation's drug epidemic. Altogether, there emerges a picture of working-class families needlessly but profoundly damaged as a result of decades of policy mistakes. With their superb, nuanced reportage, Kristof and WuDunn have given us a book that is both riveting and impossible to ignore.

  • Format: Hardcover
  • Author: Wudunn, Sheryl
  • ISBN: 9780525655084
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 9.50 x 1.20
  • Number Of Pages: 320
  • Publication Year: 2020

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  • Tightrope

    sherryl L. - 4 years 1 month ago

    The book was very informative and thought provoking about the challenges many Americans currently face trying to achieve the American dream.

  • Kristof and WuDunn integrate case studies to put a face to problems and give story to statistics. Tightrope serves as a contemporary gospel.

    Jennifer N. - 5 years 11 months ago

    In Half the Sky, Kristof and WuDunn “tried to shine a light on urgent and neglected...oppression of women around the world; now we are trying to illuminate similarly urgent and neglected crises in our own backyards.” In the past, they targeted injustice around the globe, now they are targeting the humanitarian crisis here at home. “This is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue; it is an American issue.” The theme of this book is threefold. First, “to a degree unnoticed in more privileged parts of America, working-class communities have collapsed into a miasma of unemployment, broken families, drugs, obesity and early death.” Second, “suffering in working-class America...reflects decades of social-policy mistakes and often gratuitous cruelty.” Third, “we can adopt policies that...mitigate suffering and provide traction for struggling families.” In Tightrope, Kristof and WuDunn “offer helping hands rather than pointed fingers.” In a country where the poor are rendered invisible by incarceration and institutional injustice, Kristof and WuDunn perform surgery on our national cataracts; they provide hope for a future that’s more balanced and less of a balancing act on a Tightrope. Tightrope explores the historical trajectory of injustice in our country and the various areas of opportunities for change: employment, drugs. “For those from lower on the socioeconomic spectrum, life resembles a tightrope walk.” In the words of recovering addict Drew Goff, “ it’s a tight rope that I’m walking. And sometimes it seems to be made of fishing line.” Kristof and WuDunn’s Book is a call for America trade in its tightropes and “get back in the escalator business” instead.