They were investments in the future rather than just handouts.
And it turns out what happens was that these people saw that, wow, there’s a way out. [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. And so I think that, the discrepancy is remarkable. And we’ll talk about some of those stories today.So, Nicholas, you’ve reported around the world in conflict zones and developing countries.
. But again, one of those keywords that I feel from your book is balance. The overall pie has done extraordinarily well.
And in the end, he needed rehab, but he couldn’t pay for it. And the mom worked on a tractor with the little one Keylin in tow because she didn’t have any child care.
And, you know, for whatever reason, I mean, they did get nudges. Whereas we, we have kept our same policies for all these years. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book “The Presidents.” He later was Associate Managing Editor of the Times for Sunday editions.In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China. Because they knew once they got to the Willamette Valley they’d get 640 acres, and something like a quarter of white families in America owe part of their family wealth to the Homestead Acts originally. And so they said instead of sending these people to jail, let’s send them to drug rehab.
You know, one of the kind of remarkable statistics we came across is that for Americans who do three things, who graduate from high school, who get a full time job, and who marry before having children, only 2% live in poverty. And those programs strike me as quite brilliant in that they encouraged people to take steps that would lift themselves. There’s been a lot of research. I mean, what an investment in America’s future that was. They about the same time that we were starting, launching our war on drugs, they basically said, no, let’s actually try the public health tool kit. We know that hope is really important. The story was produced and edited by Samantha Laine Perfas, engineered by Tim Malone, with sound design by Noel Flatt. . What was it like reporting in your own backyard?KRISTOF: This was a lot more difficult because we’d spent a lot of time in, say, refugee camps, interviewing people. In one case, one actually good friend of ours was an alcoholic. But if you’re on the tightrope, then maybe you’ll make it across, but one stumble and that’s it. If there had been better job opportunities for Clayton, and if Clayton had not been kicked out of school in the ninth grade for fighting, then Clayton would not have made that bad choice. I was reading recently and I think this is an annual thing that you do, that you wrote a column recently in The New York Times that said this has been the best year ever. And we saw this humanitarian crisis unfolding there. It’s much, much more than that. So you can see how the next generation has tumbled downward instead of spiraled up, which is what the futures of many Americans now are. Their father was a union pipe layer. . And you kind of say, we hope that our book can have a similar effect in opening up this world that Sheryl, you were just talking about, to people understanding how are actually people living in these circumstances and what do we need to know to change those outcomes?KRISTOF: Yeah, there’s this fundamental disconnect because, look, the American economy now in some ways is doing great, and the stock market has been doing fantastically. Paperback . "Tightrope" authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn saw despair across the U.S., so they began shifting through statistics and solutions. 3.8 out of 5 stars 4. And she was arrested. You can’t cure someone in three months. And if you like what you heard, you can help us create more content like this by subscribing to The Christian Science Monitor. You get a good job, right? And we thought that this would be one way of telling that story and highlighting the problems out there.SAPPENFIELD: Sheryl, one thing that is so apparent in the book is that we are really invited to take a journey with Nicholas because we’re going back to a place that you loved so much, where you grew up, where you have friends. And yet, you know, of course, looking back, why did the pioneers cross the country? China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power Nicholas D. Kristof. And, you know, Mark, it is so much harder to talk to kids you’ve grown up with, who you competed with on the high school track, you passed notes to in class, you had crushes on and talk to them about drug abuse, homelessness, an attempted suicide, and the struggles with their children.