- Paperback: 421 pages
- Publisher: Picador; New edition edition (19 Feb 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330374451
- ISBN-13: 978-0330374453
- Product Dimensions: 38 x 19.4 x 3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,542,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The United States has always been a land of marked contrasts, but never more so than now. While newspapers talk of the longest economic boom in memory, increasingly played out in cyber-reality, there is a physical reality out there that grows apace with disturbing results. The poor are the American Dream's underbelly, its bastard offspring. Few have shown the courage to examine it, but award-winning New Yorker journalist William Finnegan has, and his book, the result of eight years research, demands to reach an audience more used to picking up the new Bill Bryson.
Finnegan concentrates on four families, from throughout the United States; two are black, one is Mexican, one is white, but a grinding poverty unites them, seeming to thwart any of their attempts to drag themselves from a relentless cycle of crime, drugs and gangs. He describes one street scene in New Haven as "an Edward Hopper painting reworked by Anselm Kiefer". but he does not pass through, taking vox-pops; he stays around the people for long periods, popping back over the years. His unflinching prose is magnificently serious and painfully sentient, burning with an anger (partly his), but always perceiving a humanity despite itself. The fractured characters he meets, such as Terry, the drugs dealer who dreams of owning a restaurant, or Mindy, with her White Supremacist boyfriend, represent a splinter in the Achilles Heel of the Dream, rejecting its promises for a narcotic reverie that feeds an alternative economy of warped extremes.
Sociological studies like this have precedents, such as Jack London's turn-of-the-century "People of the Abyss", about London's East End. That abyss still yawns. Finnegan provides a scorchingly involving chronicle of a grave new world in which the structure of government and its enforcers see no worth, but which consequentially continues to swell. Brilliantly researched and urgently relevant, "Cold New World" presents a "now" embodying the legacy of "then", and it is shocking. --David Vincent
Product Description
A journey through four areas of America with the author examining the country's growing poverty class and its adolescents, focusing on drug-taking and drug-trafficking. The author is a staff reporter for the "New Yorker".
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon U.K.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Social Issues > Illness & Addiction > Alcoholism
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Social Issues > Illness & Addiction > Drug Addiction
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Sociology > Family & Social Groups > Age Groups > Adolescents
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Sociology > Family & Social Groups > Age Groups > Children
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
