Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

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 show more 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.

The paramount lesson of our exploration was the need to fix the escalators and create more of them to spread opportunity, restore people's dignity and spark their ingenuity.~from Tightrope by Kristof and WuDunn show less

This book should be required reading. It's insightful, depressing, yet still ultimately hopeful. Pulitzer Prize winning couple write a gut wrenching account of how America has ultimately failed it's people in the last half century through the lens of author Nicholas D. Kristof's hometown, Yamhill and a few other US locations. From a broken education, prison, health system and more; the authors explain how the system used to be, how it is now, and what can be done to fix it to bring the United States back up to speed with the rest of the industrialized first world countries. There are lots of personal stories and photos that really hammer down HOW these policies really affect many Americans. It is very depressing but at the same time the show more authors make sure to highlight social programs that people have started to combat issues of addiction, homelessness, and college education. It's an enlightening and ultimately inspiring book. Do yourself a favor and read this book before you vote! Then pass on this book to everyone you know!!!! show less

First, if you read a review or synopsis of this book and think, "I've read books like this" - if you've read Dopesick, Evicted, The New Jim Crow, Educated, Beyond These Walls, or similar books, don't bother reading this book. Those are all better, if different and more focused, treatments of the problems discussed here.

Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope outlines a number of serious problems facing poor people in America. Topics include their struggles in schools, their difficulties accessing medical and mental health treatment, the criminal justice system, and family structure. Most of these are discussed through the lens of Yamhill, Oregon, where Nicholas Kristof grew up. While the personal stories are well-told, the discussions of show more problems don't go into particular depth and could be better referenced. However, that isn't my main problem with the book.

The authors go very, very far out of their way to come across as middle-of-the-road, politically. Almost every problem is followed by "This isn't exclusively liberal or conservative", and every helpful government program is followed by a helpful privately-run nonprofit, funded by individuals. In some cases, particular political actions are called out, but this is relatively rare and usually focuses on recent (post-Trump) actions. This approach tends to portray history as a series of events that just happened. There are statements like "Because of abortion politics, family planning is toxic", which neatly sidestep the people deliberately tying contraception to abortion.

I think they're doing this in an effort to appeal to people on the political right as well as the left, but I don't understand why - Nicholas Kristof works for the New York Times, so it's unlikely that the book gains much traction in conservative circles. The solutions offered by the book tend to be presented as "if we compromise and find middle ground, we can solve this problem," but many of their proposals - greater access to birth control and comprehensive sex education, universal healthcare, raising the minimum wage - are things that the left has tried to pass for years while the right has been vehemently opposed.

The proposals chosen and the support presented for them are somewhat arbitrary as well. "End child homelessness" sounds nice, but Housing First-style programs, briefly mentioned elsewhere in the book, have worked in many cities to end all homelessness. There's no reason to continue with the voucher approaches presented here. The goal of increasing high school graduation rates by requiring students to stay in school until 18 is interesting, but why support it by citing high graduation rates in Ireland and Finland, where students are only required to attend through the age of 16?

In short, the authors paint a portrait of poor Americans struggling through life, knowing that their parents or grandparents had it better, but half of the hopeful stories they offer (nonprofit founder forced to declare personal bankruptcy to keep the doors open, the military as the closest thing to a social safety net) are even more depressing. The solutions they offer have the sense of "well, maybe this isn't the best we could do, but at least it's something..."

Finally, the reduction of America into black people and white people is both puzzling and disappointing. Asian and Hispanic people are rarely mentioned and Native Americans, for the most part, are relegated to a footnote at the end of Chapter 14. show less

Heartbreaking and maddening and inspiring. The authors do a fine job of showing the difficult lives of a somewhat random subset of Americans facing very rough lives, caused by both their own frailties and by issues way outside their own control. All of the people are depicted in a very personal way, but especially the many people that Kristof grew up with and went to school with who didn’t survive the awful things that happened to them and well as the awful mistakes they themselves made. It’s easy to say “it’s society’s fault” and it’s easy to say “it’s poor people’s own faults” but the authors show what a tangled mess it really is, and how some social changes could really help (imperfect) people do much better, show more and thus be able to contribute back. show less

We Are Better Than This, Yes?

In the past few years, books have appeared about America’s working poor and just plain poor, not to mention America’s drift to the right and our current populist phenomenon, some better than others. Kristof and WuDunn’s book is among the best on these topics for a couple of reasons.

The authors offer personal stories of Nicholas’ boyhood friends, boys and girls with whom he rode the bus to school and played with. These are real people who once had futures, who the author knew as nice people, some brighter than others, people like you probably grew up with, if you lived in a small town, or in the middle class part of town, if you came from a working class family. In other words, these are ordinary show more Americans, and they ran into a buzzsaw by virtue of birth, or job loss, or illness and lack of medical care, or bad care, and a myriad of others problems. They might look like deadbeats to some, people who made their problems; in reality, they are like us, you, me, the Kristofs, and bad decisions and an equal dose of circumstances crushed them.

Then the authors use these stories of what happened to these people, many of whom are either now dead or destitute, to explain what’s happening in America’s communities, how dysfunctional family lives, drugs, violence, excess incarceration levels, job losses, and unwanted pregnancies account not just for the plight in his hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, but of that in small towns and inner cities across America. These authors examine how millions of Americans devolved into the situations devouring them, both through their own means the compounding effect of lack of meaningful, consistent, research-based solutions to the overarching factors affecting them.

What’s more, they explore programs, although small, that are working to turn around lives, and based on this, offer a number of suggestions that could break the current cycle of despair and early dead. That’s where the hope comes in, that there are ways, many proven, that can lift many people up. The challenge, however, and it’s a huge one, is getting Americans to recognize we face a collective problem. This isn’t, as too many of us believe, simply an issue of personal responsibility. The authors acknowledge that personal responsibility plays a role here. However, they argue very effectively, based on research and in dollars and lives to be saved, that there’s a collective, national responsibility, too. If we would heed even a bit of what they have to say, if our leaders, both in government and business, would listen, if we could embrace the idea of shared responsibility, then we as individuals and as a country would ultimately be better off. It boils down to: are we better than this, better than the way we now are ignoring the issue of poverty in America, or blaming it solely on the poor? The solution rests with us. show less

We Are Better Than This, Yes?

In the past few years, books have appeared about America’s working poor and just plain poor, not to mention America’s drift to the right and our current populist phenomenon, some better than others. Kristof and WuDunn’s book is among the best on these topics for a couple of reasons.

The authors offer personal stories of Nicholas’ boyhood friends, boys and girls with whom he rode the bus to school and played with. These are real people who once had futures, who the author knew as nice people, some brighter than others, people like you probably grew up with, if you lived in a small town, or in the middle class part of town, if you came from a working class family. In other words, these are ordinary show more Americans, and they ran into a buzzsaw by virtue of birth, or job loss, or illness and lack of medical care, or bad care, and a myriad of others problems. They might look like deadbeats to some, people who made their problems; in reality, they are like us, you, me, the Kristofs, and bad decisions and an equal dose of circumstances crushed them.

Then the authors use these stories of what happened to these people, many of whom are either now dead or destitute, to explain what’s happening in America’s communities, how dysfunctional family lives, drugs, violence, excess incarceration levels, job losses, and unwanted pregnancies account not just for the plight in his hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, but of that in small towns and inner cities across America. These authors examine how millions of Americans devolved into the situations devouring them, both through their own means the compounding effect of lack of meaningful, consistent, research-based solutions to the overarching factors affecting them.

What’s more, they explore programs, although small, that are working to turn around lives, and based on this, offer a number of suggestions that could break the current cycle of despair and early dead. That’s where the hope comes in, that there are ways, many proven, that can lift many people up. The challenge, however, and it’s a huge one, is getting Americans to recognize we face a collective problem. This isn’t, as too many of us believe, simply an issue of personal responsibility. The authors acknowledge that personal responsibility plays a role here. However, they argue very effectively, based on research and in dollars and lives to be saved, that there’s a collective, national responsibility, too. If we would heed even a bit of what they have to say, if our leaders, both in government and business, would listen, if we could embrace the idea of shared responsibility, then we as individuals and as a country would ultimately be better off. It boils down to: are we better than this, better than the way we now are ignoring the issue of poverty in America, or blaming it solely on the poor? The solution rests with us. show less

Kristof and WuDunn look at what's wrong with America from the bottom, through the lens of working class people, most of them people who Kristof grew up with and ent to school with. Coincidentally, I read Thomas Friedman's "Thank You For Being Late" while reading "Tightrope". Tightrope is the better book, perhaps for Kristof and WuDunn it is personal. The focus is on white working class people, with side trips to hear the stories of homeless veterans and African-Americans in the South. There are, thankfully, no stereotypes in these pages; the authors see and record the humanity of the people who are data points in the decline of the American working class, in the suicide and overdose statistics, in the sense of resentment which is their show more legacy. The authors look at the larger picture, at what decisions and policies contribute to the current sense of crisis (before Covid-19 swept the true problems off the stage). They do not score points off one party or politician but rather focus on what can be done to improve things for the children and the grandchildren of the friends whose tragic stories they tell. This is a moving and important work of compassion and journalism. show less