Cold New World: Growing Up in Harder Country (Modern Library Paperbacks) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Finnegan does not deny that a conspicuous minority of our younger citizens are finding themselves fabulously fortunate, preoccupied with drowning themselves in the material excesses too many of us wallow in, but it is to the other, less-chronicled segment of the twenty-something generation that he brings his considerable talents and insights, and he weaves a fascinating, fulsome, and frightening narrative around a series of personal anecdotes and experiences of teenageers and young adults trapped by life circumstances and poverty into lives that give the thoughtful reader pause. According to the author, a new, more rigid, and less fluid socioeconomic class system is emerging that makes the old and more tradition notions of rugged individualism look like a overly generous social welfare state. And we all know it was hardly that.

Finnegan spent a great deal of time with families in a number of different communities across the country, and became an intimate observer to the kinds of futile and often desperate attempts to become participating card-carrying members of the increasingly elusive American Dream. His is a terrific and absorbing look at the issues of race, ethnicity, social class, and social change as it is rapidly evolving in contemporary American culture, and the author never loses sight of the basic humanity of each of his subjects or their struggles to gain the material success and security so often portrayed in the electronic media they watch incessantly. Those he writes about are always dealt with in compassionate terms, recognizing individual complexities and talents that belie their poor educational experiences and lack of opportunities. We recognize the subjects as intelligent and multi-faceted people, and empathize with their frustrating existential situations.

This is a book one finds fascinating to read, in spite of its gloomy assessment of the reality of life in the "not-so-toni" barrios and exurbs surrounding the cities. It is an extremely entertaining and edifying book, a poignant and intelligent excursion into the heart of America's expanding impoverished underclass, and a well-focused peer into the unpromising future for millions of youngsters and twenty-something adults just now entering the job market with so few skills and very little hope of climbing out of their own desperate life circumstances. The book is a must-read for anyone thinking that Michael Harrington's "Other America" has melted away in under the prevailing influence of the financially sunny 1990s, and I recommend it as a book representing a more comprehensive national perspective regarding the need for government action to provide more opportunities and a variety of appropriate training programs for such disenfranchised Americans. As John Kennedy once said, if we cannot reach out to help the most humble and wretched among us, then there is little hope to save the fortunate few.

Finnegan shows how faulty American public policy has ravaged the nation. The book is tightly written, provides meaningful analysis, and it's scope extends across the entire American ethnic mix.