Losing Our Way

Starred review from October 6, 2014
Former New York Times columnist Herbert (America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics) describes how the "great promise of America" has been tarnished by foreign policy decisions, chronic unemployment, income inequality, and political gridlock. As in his columns, Herbert ardently defends those being left behind in this current "winner-take-all" economy. As he travels across the U.S. interviewing the jobless and wounded, as well as noted educators, economists, activists and political leaders, he focuses on the four issues most pressing to himâinfrastructure, employment, public education, and ending our "profoundly debilitating," military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. What emerges from his chronicle is a devastating portrait of a country where one in six people is officially poor; the top three private sector employers (Wal-Mart, Yum! Brands and McDonald's) provide non-unionized, low-wage, part-time jobs with few benefits; 12% of the nation's bridges are "structurally deficient"; and suicide among veterans is at record levels. Herbert convincingly argues that while public schools are doing better than detractors indicate (American test scores are dragged down by the U.S.'s greater social inequality), reforms like high-stakes testing, vouchers, and charter and online schools have not helped. Herbert ends by urging bold new leadership against an "intolerable status quo" and pointing to encouraging examples of citizen groups rising up across the country.

August 15, 2014
Former New York Times opinion columnist Herbert (Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream, 2005) reports on his cross-country trip investigating the lives of the 99 percent.The author discovered a nation demoralized by economic struggles, victimized by crumbling infrastructure, worried about their children's futures, and feeling powerless to effect change. Herbert maintains that the country can make a fresh start "if citizens overcome their reluctance to engage in collective civic action on an organized and sustained basis" and "intervene aggressively and courageously in their own fate." Calling for united action, the author likens the potential for change to the civil rights, labor and women's movements, which were "led by citizens fed up with an intolerable status quo." Herbert focuses on four main themes: failing infrastructure, inadequate education (especially schools in poor areas), income inequality, and the moral, monetary and physical costs of war. In the Studs Terkel mold, he follows several individuals that exemplify the problems he addresses. A woman who was severely injured when a bridge on Interstate 35 collapsed in Minneapolis is central to his claim that the country is in "a wretched state of disrepair." A soldier who lost both legs and an arm in Afghanistan points up the enormous costs of war in dollars and human suffering. Even $4 trillion is an underestimate, Herbert writes, to account for veterans' disability and medical care. The author interviews students, educators and policy experts to conclude that current reform measures, focused on testing, "have undermined rather than strengthened America's schools." Poverty, and the anxiety, grief and fear that result, has a severe impact on student performance. In vivid anecdotes and moving portraits, Herbert humanizes the many problems he uncovers, and he clearly believes that Americans can, and will, band together to set the nation on a new course.

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