Archive Event Highlight
An Abandoned American Class – Kristof and WuDunn to Discuss ‘Tightrope’
We have extended the deadline to RSVP until Thursday, Feb. 20 at 4:00 p.m.
Click here to RSVP on Eventbrite >>
In their latest book, best-selling authors Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn turned their focus on America’s economic crisis and foundering working class. Tightrope: Americans Reach for Hope connects the dots between policy shortcomings, the hemorrhaging of blue-collar jobs, and devastation in small rural towns.
Kristof and WuDunn will discuss Tightrope during a book night at Club Quarters on Feb. 20 at 6:00 p.m. The event will be held in the dining room.
Admission is $10 per person, but OPC members can receive a code to register for this event for free. Members can keep an eye out for emails with the promotion link, or contact info@opcofamerica.org.
The book’s inspiration stemmed from Kristof’s hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, where about a quarter of many of his childhood classmates have died from drugs, alcohol, suicide, reckless accidents and preventable diseases such as obesity and diabetes.
“We wanted to understand more deeply what had happened to Nick’s friends on the school bus,” the duo wrote, as they investigated “how our country could have let tens of millions of people suffer an excruciating loss of jobs, dignity, lives, hopes and children.”
Many of the book’s personal stories come from Yamhill, but their reporting took them across all fifty states, from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to New York and Virginia.
Kristof is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times and previously served as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. WuDunn worked at the Times as a business editor and foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Beijing, and now works in finance and consulting. They have coauthored four previous books together: A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes.
