Tightrope

This was a really solid read, and as a former Yamhill County resident, it hit close to home. I thought the personal stories were the strongest part, and the connections drawn were good, but it felt like it tried to tackle too many topics in a single book. Overall strong reporting and relevant conclusions.

I am only going to say this once, and then I will try my hardest never to harp on it again, as I suspect I have reached my complaint quota on this particular issue ...

When I was 16, I walked into our local weekly newspaper's office and told them I wanted to work for them, and thus I got an internship copyediting the paper and doing some very minor reporting work. One of the first things I remember the editor telling me was that you can't just interview the people you already know. And I know Kristoff and WuDunn worked at much bigger and more important publications than my little weekly, and have won Pulitzers for their previous work on much more hard-hitting subjects than this week's school board meeting, and that's why it bothered me so much that the framing of this book was so much around kids that Kristoff was friends with on the school bus.

OK, shutting up about that now.

This was a broad look at poverty and how America has failed its citizens through unemployment/underemployment, addiction, lack of healthcare, homelessness, incarceration, and more. It includes a lot of statistics, and also a lot of wrenching personal stories. If you don't already know about our country's poorest people, I think this is an eye-opening read of the issues and possible solutions. Particularly the anecdotes in the healthcare chapter regarding people waiting for free health fairs in order to get treatment, and how poverty affects pregnancy, were harrowing to me.

The authors identify as more left-leaning, as do I, and I still found myself having a bit of a hard time accepting that so many of their suggested solutions to reducing poverty and its effects required government policy, programming and funding. Particularly if the super wealthy continue to get tax breaks for just about anything. They outlined some wonderful programs that are helping with keeping kids in school and away from violence and drugs, programs to help women through addiction, etc. and talk about ways of scaling those programs, and to me that sounds like a more reasonable solution than asking the government to step in and intervene (... we've seen how well that worked for the Covid vaccine rollout ...). But as they point out, programs often have unintended consequences. I am still learning.

Other reading if this subject is something that interests, you: Dopesick by Beth Macy.

This book is about 260 pgs. Within those pages, you're welcomed into the life of the Number 6 school bus kids and general ordinary people doing extraordinary things and the stories that surround them. This book covers most of the issues plaguing our society in one way or another and offers ways that you and I could help fix them. There is an obvious lean to the government intervention solutions, but the authors do leave room for the idea that ordinary people can do things to change our trajectory.

I found this book to be a good reminder of ideas I already support and issues that I was already aware of. I think this would be a great book for anyone who enjoyed Educated by Tara Westover, Hillbilly Elegy, and anyone who would like to know more about why the COVID-19 crisis is particularly distressing for a country, in many ways, already in many, many crises.

Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas D. Kristof take a look at America's problems today with jobs that don't pay well, drug difficulties, the lack of a safety net, and poverty, and they start in their own backyard, looking at people they know personally.

It's a careful look at the promise these people had as children and how these people fell off the tightrope that is today's America.

And then they do more—they look at places that offer solutions to these problems, and they offer these up to us.

Let's hope those who are in charge of the world read this book.

#2020ReadNonFic