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 tale, in part, through the lives of a number of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural about Tightrope: People in america Reaching for Hope Yamhill, Oregon, an area that prospered for a lot of the twentieth century but has been devastated within the last few decades as blue-collar careers disappeared. About one-quarter of the kids on Kristof’s older school bus died in adulthood from drugs, alcoholic beverages, suicide, or reckless incidents. And while these specific stories unfolded in a single corner of the country, these are representative of many places the authors write about, ranging from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to New York and Virginia. But right here too are stories about resurgence, among them: Annette Dove, that has committed her life to helping the teenagers of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as they get around the chaotic fact of developing up poor; Daniel McDowell, of Baltimore, whose story of opioid craving and recovery shows that there are viable ways to resolve our nation’s medication epidemic. These accounts, illustrated with searing pictures by Lynsey Addario, the award-winning photographer, give a picture of working-class families needlessly but profoundly damaged as a result of decades of policy mistakes. With their outstanding, nuanced reportage, Kristof and WuDunn possess provided us a book that is both riveting and difficult to ignore.