Tightrope

Americans Reaching for Hope

De: Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

Narrado por: Jennifer Garner, Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

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 the children on Kristof's old school bus 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. These accounts provide 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.

Comprehensive look on poverty in the US

I really got into this book. Jennifer Garner did a great job as a narrator and you could tell the author was very passionate about the topic. From what I understand, the families in the story are families he knew from his hometown so that added to his connection to the topic I think. This book focuses a lot on economics, which I coincidentally happen to be taking a macroeconomics course in college at the time of listening so it really tied the concepts together for me. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in social welfare.

A great companion to many of his op-ed pieces

When you read about these people you want to believe that their lives are the result of just poor choices and Kristoff does acknowledge that many of his friends ended up as they did due to choices. But he also explains that choices are only one reason for the sad lives of his Yamhill friends and it's a good study what has gone wrong with American society over the years. Admittedly it's a depressing read but also an important one to understand history and current events.

Tightrope

This will be a Kristof/WuDunn semester for me and my college students. Studying national and international conditions for marginalized communities, this book, along with Half the sky and A path, appears will give students an understanding of some of the challenging topics confronting people suffering from social and occupational injustice, changing social conditions, inhumanity, and humanity. It is my hope that students’ eyes will be open to these issues and work enact positive social change.

Poverty in America

I like the the generational point of view of poverty and simple ideas on how Americans can fixed or reduce poverty.

Outstanding!

Every state and national legislator needs to read this book. It is time for us to focus on what really matters - our human capital - if the United States wants to regain the leadership position it pretends to hold.