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 Lifetime Achievement Award. 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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