Powell’s Books Presents NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF & SHERYL WUDUNN
Newmark Theatre 1111 SW Broadway Ave., PortlandNicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, bestselling authors of Half the Sky, return with a deeply personal new book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. Looking with clear eyes at our nation’s governmental failures over the past half-century, Kristof and WuDunn examine the contemporary crisis in working-class America through the lens of the families Kristof grew up with in the rural, working-class town of Yamhill, Oregon. Yamhill prospered for much of the 20th century, but, like many working class towns, has been devastated as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About one-quarter of the kids Kristof grew up with have died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents. “We wanted to understand more deeply what had happened to Nick’s friends on the school bus,” they write, and “how our…