Review_NONFICTION
52 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ NOVEMBER 4, 2019
Review_NONFICTION
Bluff after-school program, but contend
that pockets of individual charity cannot
solve the nation’s systemic problems.
Threaded throughout are policy sugges-
tions emphasizing the importance of
early childhood education, universal
health coverage, fair tax rates, common-
sense drug policy, affordable housing,
and strong worker protections. Kristof
and WuDunn avoid pity while creating
empathy for their subjects, and effectively
advocate for a “morality of grace” to
which readers should hold policy makers
accountable. This essential, clear-eyed
account provides worthy solutions to
some of America’s most complex socio-
economic problems. (Jan.)Why We Can’t Sleep:
Women’s New Midlife Crisis
Ada Calhoun. Grove, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-0-
8021-4785-1
Memoirist Calhoun (Wedding Toasts
I’ll Never Give) explores the stresses
keeping Gen X women up at night (both
literally and metaphorically) in this
bracing, empowering study. As women
born between 1965 and 1980 enter
middle age, Calhoun writes, they face
“a gauntlet of anxieties” related to their
status as “the
Jan Brady of
generations,”
sandwiched
between older
baby boomers
and younger
millennials.
Interviewing
middle-class
American
women she met
through friends, social media, and in
doctors’ waiting rooms and other random
encounters, Calhoun discusses worries
about money (“Gen X has more debt
than any other generation”), divorce
(“our generation are the beta tested vic-
tims of the Boomers’ record-high
divorce rate”), and caring for young chil-
dren and ailing parents simultaneously
(“the caretaking rack”). She shares her
own experiences as well as data from the
Center for Economic and Policy Research
and Harvard’s Equality of Opportunity
Project, among other sources. Despite all
the damning statistics (“one in fourFlaubert lampooned in his novel Bouvard
and Pecuchet); and the modern $10 billion
industry that blends psychology with
narrative storytelling. Blum believes
there is a positive force at work—“At a
time when the
value of litera-
ture is often
called into
question, self-
help offers a
reminder of the
promises of
transformation,
agency, culture,
and wisdom
that draw
readers to books.” Blum keeps things
animated with frequent humorous
asides, as when she notes that a 17th-
century book on how to live a life that
would land a person in heaven was paro-
died not long after by one titled A Sure
Guide to Hell. This insightful look at a
popular genre will give fans and critics
alike much to contemplate. (Jan.)Tightrope:
Americans Reaching for Hope
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
Knopf, $27.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-525-65508-4
Husband and wife journalists Kristof
and WuDunn (A Path Appears) turn a
compassionate lens on the failed state of
working-class American communities in
this stark, fluidly written portrait. In
profiling residents of Baltimore, Md.,
and Pine Bluff, Ark., as well as Kristof’s
classmates from rural Yamhill, Ore., the
authors seek to counteract the “cruel
narrative that working-class struggle is
about bad choices, laziness, and vices.”
They urge readers to reflect not only on
“individual irresponsibility” but on the
“collective irresponsibility” of American
society, espe-
cially in com-
parison to other
first-world
countries where
the social safety
net is stronger.
The authors
highlight the
successes of
local nonprofits,
including a Pinecase studies,
including a
lesbian couple
who design
menswear for
women, an
Amish factory
producing
horse-drawn
farm equip-
ment, and a
pencil manu-
facturer that charges “bafflingly expensive”
prices for #2s. Davidson’s business
advice—shun commodity price-compe-
tition; find sheltered, high-margin
niche markets—isn’t new, but his anec-
dotes are captivating, with shrewd
lessons on management, marketing, and
strategy. Firing bad customers, he
notes, is as important as finding new
ones. His case for mass entrepreneurship
as a cure-all for economic discontents is
less convincing, as it involves imponder-
ables (“Knowing yourself is crucial”),
risks, and sharp edges (“price conversa-
tions” need to be “filled with some
degree of tension and awkwardness”).
Nevertheless, readers with a start-up
yen will find useful and inspiring
insights here. (Jan.)The Self-Help Compulsion:
Searching For Advice in Modern
Literature
Beth Blum. Columbia Univ., $35 (368p)
ISBN 978-0-231-19492-1
Harvard English professor Blum’s
outstanding debut places self-help
books in historical and literary contexts
while making the case that their
intent—to get readers to read for
improvement—is a good thing, despite
the genre being derided by many aca-
demics. Nonexperts may be surprised at
the commercial popularity of the self-
help category, she writes. To understand
the mass appeal, she treats self-help
books as literature—an approach that
she maintains has been underutilized.
Blum considers some of the earliest self-
help (such as Joseph Alleine’s 1689 A
Sure Guide to Heaven); 19th-century
“mutual improvement societies” that
led the boom of self-help individualism,
including Samuel Smiles’s 1859 Self-
Help (which, Blum argues, Gustave