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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > Age groups > Adolescents
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Cold New World (Paperback, New edition)
Loot Price: R519
Discovery Miles 5 190
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Cold New World (Paperback, New edition)
Series: Modern Library
 (1 rating, sign in to rate)
Loot Price R519
Discovery Miles 5 190
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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A beautifully written, poignant journey through America's growing
poverty class and the adolescents who wander without direction
through this dreary landscape. Finnegan's fine narrative of life in
these troubled times is a good counterweight to the blather many
politicians will offer this election season about the necessity of
caring for our children. A writer for the New Yorker, where
portions of this book have appeared, Finnegan (Crossing the Line: A
Year in the Land of Apartheid, 1986, etc.) traveled across America,
landing in four geographically distinct and yet - as he aptly shows
- spiritually similar spots. Among the telling portraits of
individuals is Terry Jackson, a 15-year-old New Haven, Conn., drug
dealer who tries to use his ill-gotten profits to buy himself a
certain degree of security and self-esteem. San Augustine County,
Tex., residents are forever changed by a large-scale but ultimately
questionable drug raid. In Yakima Valley, Wash., Mexican-American
adolescents struggle to find themselves in a culture vastly
different from that of their working-class parents. And, finally,
the author offers a chilling portrait of anomie and violence among
teenage skinheads in the downwardly mobile Antelope Valley in
northern Los Angeles County. The reasons for these teens'
dislocation are myriad, and include the abdication of parental
roles, unequal educational opportunities, and racism. But even
more, Finnegan blames deindustrialization and the need for mothers
to leave home and work. Finnegan excoriates welfare "reform," which
is "forcing additional millions of poor mothers into the paid work
force," and leaving their children adrift. A bleak conclusion
indeed. But what could have been a desolate story instead is given
power and depth by Finnegan's smooth prose and his insightful
asides as he shares these young people's lives. A perspicacious,
compellingly written tale of young people for whom the future holds
little, if any, promise. (Kirkus Reviews)
New Yorker writer William Finnegan spent time with families in four communities across America and became an intimate observer of the lives he reveals in these beautifully rendered portraits: a fifteen-year-old drug dealer in blighted New Haven, Connecticut; a sleepy Texas town transformed by crack; Mexican American teenagers in Washington State, unable to relate to their immigrant parents and trying to find an identity in gangs; jobless young white supremacists in a downwardly mobile L.A. suburb. Important, powerful, and compassionate, Cold New World gives us an unforgettable look into a present that presages our future.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction of 1998 selection
One of the Voice Literary Supplement's Twenty-five Favorite Books of 1998
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