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 … 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.
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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.
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.
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!
This book should be required reading by all the newspeople on Fox News and all our Congress people. The authors include so much documented evidence to support their observations about the failings of U.S. policy related to drug addiction, health care, homelessness and poverty in a very readable style.
First, I listened to this via audiobook and was wowed by the narration of Jennifer Garner, who I love and adore! Love her voice and she was fantastic! A lot of non-fiction books I feel so-so about when authors are trying to tell us how to think, etc, but this one I greatly related to. This book constantly has stories of people who have suffered in our country because of the messed up way our country is. I agree 100% with the points made in this book. We need universal healthcare, plans in place to help those less-fortunate and in the poorer class demographic. If we did things talked about in this book, our people would be so much better off. We could save money in the end. Statistics of what other countries do to help their citizens compared to here is sickening. The problem is, knowing all these things need to happen, is how to make them happen. We need a complete transformation in government in my opinion. The current people making the rules are against universal healthcare and don’t have compassion for those without their wealth. They blame us, so who will make this country better for everyone and not just the rich? I’d love to have these suggestions brought to life. Everyone needs to read this book and make it a blueprint for change.
I am a long-time reader of Nicholas Kristof’s articles in the New York Times and I have read Half the Sky by Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn. I was interested in their newest book Tightrope. A few weeks ago while waiting for a talk at a local library, I picked up Tightrope from the new books shelf and started reading. The next day, I went out to a local bookstore and bought the book.
Yet those kids ended up riding into a cataclysm, as working-class communities disintegrated across America, felled by lost jobs, broken families and despair.~ from Tightrope by Kristof and WuDunn
Tightrope is a deeply personal book; Kristof writes about the kids who were on the bus he took to school, people who were his neighbors and friends, and what became of them. One of out four died from drugs, suicide, alcohol, recklessness, drugs, and obesity. One is homeless and one is in prison for life. And yet Kristof left that bus and became a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Their stories become the vehicle to ask the hard questions about what has happened in America.
What went wrong? What goes right for the kids who end up successful? Who, or what, is to blame? And most importantly, what can we do prevent people from falling off the narrow tightrope?
After breaking my heart, and reading the lofty goals that could change the lives of Americans, I was pleased the Appendix shared “10 Steps You Can Take in the Next Ten Minutes to Make a Difference.” Political and social change takes time. But these steps are within our personal control.
We have blamed the poor for their poverty, criminalized addiction, threw troubled kids out of school, allowed health care and sound education to become an option only for the wealthy, watched children grow up with food insecurity, and punished people rather than give them the tools to be contributing members of society.
Americans need to change their minds and their policies. Kristof and WuDunn share success stories of successful local programs that have changed lives and which could be adopted on a larger scale.
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” after all, originally meant “do the impossible.”
Some of us were lucky with parents who offered a firm foundation, teachers who took an interest and encouraged us; some of us had opportunities for education, vocational training, or qualified for the military. When a child has none of these advantages–no boots with straps to pull–their chances of success are slim.
Americans need to shrug off the paradigm of blame.
If I could make every American voter read this book, I would — although, judging from some of the reviews, it may not sway any minds already made up. The authors use Nicholas Kristof’s friends and neighbors from his hometown of Yamhill, Oregon as a way to ground their journey through America’s growing inequality, drug use, and failure to support its children, interspersed with more hopeful examinations of people who’ve found ways to overcome that. That Yamhill grounding helps tremendously because without those personal stories I think the book could be overwhelming, and it also shows this isn’t just a racial issue (though race does get intelligently addressed, and not all the stories concern Yamhill). An urgent read if you care about the future of this country. It’s also written well enough that you will want to keep reading despite the difficult subject matter.
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.