Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope Audiobook (Free)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors from the acclaimed, best-selling Fifty percent 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 writers tell this story, partly, through the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural about Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Wish Yamhill, Oregon, a location that prospered for a lot of the twentieth century but has been devastated within the last few years as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About one-quarter of the kids on Kristof’s previous school bus died in adulthood from medications, alcoholic beverages, suicide, or reckless incidents. And while these specific stories unfolded in one corner of the united states, these are representative of many places the writers write about, ranging from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to NY and Virginia. But here too are tales about resurgence, included in this: Annette Dove, that 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 craving and recovery shows that there are viable ways to resolve our nation’s drug epidemic. These accounts, illustrated with searing images by Lynsey Addario, the award-winning professional photographer, give a picture of working-class households needlessly but profoundly damaged due to decades of policy errors. With their superb, nuanced reportage, Kristof and WuDunn have given us a reserve that is both riveting and impossible to ignore.