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.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF and SHERYL WUDUNN, the first husband and wife to share a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, have coauthored four previous books- A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes. They were awarded a Pulitzer in 1990 for their coverage of China, as well as the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Now an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, Kristof was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. He won his second Pulitzer in 2006 for his columns on Darfur. WuDunn worked at the Times as a business editor and foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Beijing, and now works in finance and consulting. They live near New York City.
“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 we’re no longer dealing in
Republican or Democratic issues, but issues of Americans’ very
survival. . . Highlighting successful small-scale programs, they
emphasize that there are potentially nationwide solutions. Both
researched and personal, this will be hard for readers to stop
thinking about.”—Annie Bostrom, Booklist [starred review]
“With compassion and empathy, [the authors] pull readers into the
lives of families who have been in a downward spiral for several
generations. . . They bring a human face to issues such as drug
addiction, incarceration, family dysfunction, and declining
prospects for employment. Enlightening for all concerned
Americans.” —Caren Nichter, Library Journal [starred
review]
“In addition to looking back at all that's been lost, the authors –
compassionate, solutions-oriented, and ultimately optimistic –
offer a path forward. . . Replacing punitive public policy with
policy approaches that recognize a collective responsibility for
our fellow citizens, they argue, will in the long run save billions
of dollars and prevent untold suffering.”—Barbara Spindel,
Christian Science Monitor
“While acknowledging the need for personal responsibility—and for
aid from private charities—the authors make a forceful case that
the penalties for missteps fall unequally on the rich and poor in
spheres that include education, health care, employment, and the
judicial system; to end the injustices, the government also must
act. . . An ardent and timely case for taking a multipronged
approach to ending working-class America's long
decline.” —Kirkus
“Kristof and WuDunn avoid pity while creating empathy for their
subjects, and effectively advocate for a ‘morality of grace’ to
which readers should hold policy makers accountable. This
essential, clear-eyed account provides worthy solutions to some of
America’s most complex socioeconomic problems." —Publishers
Weekly
“This is an unflinching book that illustrates the central,
confounding American paradox—in a country that purports to root for
the underdog, too often we exalt the rich and we punish the poor.
With thorough reporting and extraordinary compassion, Kristof and
WuDunn tell the stories of those who fall behind in the world’s
wealthiest country, and find not an efficient first-world safety
net created by their government, but a patchwork of community
initiatives, perpetually underfunded and run by tired saints. And
yet amid all the tragedy and neglect, Kristof and WuDunn conjure a
picture of how it could all get better, how it could all work.
That’s the miracle of Tightrope, and why this is such an
indispensable book.” —Dave Eggers, author of The Captain and
the Glory
“A quarter of the chums Nicholas Kristof rode to school with in the
1970s in sundown rural Yamhill, Oregon, are dead, the authors of
this riveting book tell us, from drugs, alcohol, obesity,
reckless accidents and suicide. In this deeply empathic,
important, and timely book, the authors conceive of such
childhood friends and others like them across rural America as
unwitting shock absorbers of cruel trends for which we have yet to
acknowledge collective responsibility. Read this book and pass
it on!” —Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of Strangers In Their Own
Land
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