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Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country (Modern Library Paperbacks)

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Having read several of these sociological "Real World" missives, "Cold New World" is by far the most comprehensive. Whereas works like "Code of the Street" and "The Corner" examine a single distressed area, William Finnegan's work is very ambitious in exploring problems in New Haven, rural Texas, the Pacific Northwest, and Southern California.

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.

In the midst of all the self-congratulatory celebrations marking the closing of the millennium, few affluent Americans seem aware or concerned of the innate contradictions and dysfunctions associated with the circumstances of their own affluence, or of the associated disparities, disjunctions, and despair of millions of younger Americans who are not fortunate enough, affluent enough, or politically-enfranchised enough to gain a technical or college education, and are nowhere to be found in the minions of highly paid and technicolored attired young nerds and nerdettes now running amok in the suburban malls and internet sites of mainstream America. This superbly written book by noted journalist William Finnegan details the dark side of the American Dream as we proceed into the new century.

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.

William Finnegan has a spare elegant prose style, highly readable, that sweeps us through an uncomfortable present day odyssey of the underclass of the United States. The book is impressively noted and indexed, but with distressingly small print.

Mr. Finnegan has an uncanny ability to arrive in a completely strange town and somehow immediately bond with perfect strangers who confide in him, ask him to dinner, and if necessary let him bunk down and move in. This "intimacy" gene resides in the authors of "Cold Blood" and "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." If you and I were in that strange town, we would be lucky to get directions to the nearest gas station, let alone an invitation for dinner.

If you automatically assume this underclass exists only in the inner-city ghettos, your comfort level is going to go way down. The subjects ranged from New Haven, CT, east Texas, central Washington state, and a suburb of Los Angeles. All of the youngsters had bleak, dangerous, unfocused lives. Their intelligence ranged from average to highly superior, their connection to their schools was tenuous or non-existent, their ambitions and dreams were either unrealistic or pitifully cynical. They seem to know far better than their parents that the road to the middle class is not a broad, welcoming boulevard, but an almost unreachable goal.

Supportive, loving, responsible families do not appear to be the panacea we are all led to believe. Juan admires, approves and loves his parents; he just believes their lives have nothing to do with his. Sadly, he is right. Mindy has a strong, loving mother who cannot fathom the world Mindy is almost forced to live in. The lack of impact of a strong family shocked me.

The author pulls no punches and in his summary states, "What price are Americans willing to pay for social peace? This seems to me a central question. We jail the poor in their multitudes, abandon the dream of equality, cede more and more of public life to private interests, let lobbyists run government. Those who can afford to do so lock themselves inside gated communities and send their children to private schools. And then we wonder why the world at large has become harsher and more cynical, why our kids have become strange to us. What young people show us is simply the world we have made for them."

This is a worthwhile, hard-hitting book. It will stay with you. You won't easily forget Terry, Lanee, Juan and Mindy.

I like how Finnegan concentrates on young people and their perception of America. For them it is a cold, hard world. The author listens to their concerns and at times ends up helping them. Although this book doesn't deal with crimes as large as Columbine, it might help readers understand how something as tragic as the Colorado shootings could occur. Finnegan concludes that there is no easy fix to the problems of the underclass, but a good start would be to reverse the trend of cutting funds for education.

Highly readable, extremely thought-provoking, Finnegan's book, like Robert Kaplan's "Empire Wilderness," makes one concerned with the future of American society and culture - even if one does not necessarily agree with his viewpoint. At the very least it is useful as an antidote to those who say nothing is wrong with where we are headed as a nation because there are in fact many who are being left behind. A great book for starting discussions about whether anything can or needs to be done to improve the life chances of all Americans.

William Finnegan's study of American 'underclasses' is hardly scientific in the traditional sense, yet a reading of this book will certainly earn the reader's respect for its depth and the amount of physical area it touches upon across the U.S. Finnegan gets so deep in these peoples' lives over the six years he took to gather these stories that he can describe the situations to perfection. His familiarity with the people in these stories is very clear, he was obviously not afraid to spend ample time with them. The four stories he comes back with, which make up this book, are precious nuggets of the reality facing so much youth in America right now. Finnegan always brings it back to the youth, and how the circumstances being constucted for them in this society will effect them. How are they reacting? Read the book and find out.

This mix of sociology and journalism is a mostly gripping and always harrowing journey to the four corners of the American underclass. During the early to mid-1990s, Finnegan spent time with four young people in from very different geographic locations and of very different cultural backgrounds. Each of these are detailed in 50-100 page sections, followed by a surprisingly brief coda, in which he attempts to sum up the similarities between the four cases and draw some prescriptions from them. This is that rarest of books, an in-depth, complex examination of class in America.

Finnegan starts in New Haven with Terry, who is practically a cliche of the ghetto youth. A black drug-dealing kid who blows his cash on flashy threads and gaudy jewelry for his girlfriends, he lives near the affluence of Yale University, and yet worlds away culturally. From East Coast to East Texas, where in a small town, Finnegan hangs out with Lanee, a young black woman whose community has just been the subject of a massive federal drug sting. Both sections illustrate just how enticing the drug trade is to the young poor. It's vastly more lucrative than any conceivable alternative, and there's no great social stigma attached to it. In each place, the percentage of the community who is using is so large that the trade assumes a huge place in the microeconomy and has a big ripple effect.

The New Haven section is fairly cohesive, and it's somewhat refreshing to see Finnegan admit his inability to stay detached and his attempts to lend a helping hand to Terry. The East Texas section doesn't hold together quite as well. Although Finnegan is again focusing on an individual (Lanee), he is clearly more interested in the broader story of a large federal drug sting in which virtually everyone in the community has a friend or family member indicted. This ties in with the story of the longtime reign of a benign all-powerful sheriff who recently lost reelection, which also ties in with the influence of the "old" white Texan families of the town. There are a lot of interesting threads here, and it's no wonder Finnegan gets a little distracted.

From here, the book moves west, to the Yakima Valley of central Washington state, where rural meets strip mall. There Finnegan hangs out with Juan, the eldest son of hard-working Mexican immigrant field laborers and union activists. In many ways, he's the most mainstream and self-aware kid of the book, and yet he's constantly in trouble due to a proclivity for fighting. Part of this lies within himself, and part of this stems from his need to back up his friends. Acquiring a rep for being a badass turns into a self-fulfilling trap that he has difficulty escaping. Although slacker Juan doesn't claim any of the various Latino gangs that are rampant throughout the Valley, he's perpetually caught up in various beefs that appear to be one step away from gunfire.

Finally, Finnegan winds up in the LA exurb of Antelope Valley, where he finds a white supremacist skinhead gang at war with the changing neighborhood demographics and a band of anti-racist SHARP skins. This is one of those instant communities whose bubble burst rather quickly when defense and aerospace jobs disappeared. Living in the town became a step down for whites, but a step up for black and Latino families. Fueled by meth and dead-end prospects, white power skins harass local minorities and engage in running skirmishes with anti-racist skinheads. Finnegan does an excellent job of explaining the origins and different shades of the skinhead subculture. Perhaps most disturbing are the confused hangers-on (mostly women), who are alternately allured and disgusted by the white supremacists.

The common theme is that these are all young people who are set on a course of backward mobility, compared to their parents and grandparents. Finnegan places them in the larger context of post-oil crisis, postindustrial America, where a factory job is no longer a sufficient foundation for a middle class existence. Indeed, even the concept of the middle-class as an attainable destination is completely absent. Finnegan apportions blame to the economy that makes stay-at-home parenting the province of the rich, a public education system that has given up on the bottom tier, a punitive welfare system, an ill-considered government approach to the scourge of drugs, and perhaps most tellingly, "the fecklessness and self-absorption of my own generation." This is best reflected in the stunning statistic that over the last 25 years (as of the writing), poverty among the elderly has dropped by 50%, and among children has increased by 37%. This is not an optimistic book, but it will provoke serious thought and debate--a great one for book clubs.

William Finnegan has written a truly American book, even though its characters are not quite representative of Americans at all. His interest for this book is in a certain segment of the population. The four cities he chooses are those that have been hard hit by economic downturns, and the youths he associates with and learns about are those situated in danger and immobility. What makes the book relevant to all Americans (beyond our ability to feel a basic concern for others) is that Finnegan tackles two issues that we reluctantly, and too often simplistically, face-poverty and race. A few more topics that constantly appear that I would consider as being born of the previous two are drugs and gangs.

It doesn't take much to enjoy this book. It reads like four stories. I had to keep reminding myself that these were true (according to Finnegan). After the "stories," in which Finnegan tries to keep a journalistic distance (though not always), there is an epilogue, and we see what the author is trying to get the reader the see. There are deep questions of responsibility that run through America's laws and policies, that these questions must be asked by the citizens of the country who sometimes must choose between economic growth and economic equality. Such consideration requires an understanding that some decisions allow a few to prosper and few to fall into deprivation.

It's easy to say people like Terry and Juan are hopeless, that they will forever be in trouble, and that they deserve any punishment they get. It's a little harder to say that when you consider that you have human beings in desperate conditions, and they will not go away simply by enforcing judicial toughness.

In "Cold New World," veteran New Yorker foreign correspondent William Finnegan explores the long forgotten impoverished regions of America and meets its hapless denizens, who can shift from bitter to hopeful, helpless to hardworking, fatalistic to dreamy in a matter of minutes. The people and the regions that William Finnegan visits are so near yet so distant, so familiar yet so strange, so understandable yet so unfathomable. Finnegan's heroes are hampered by a racist class system, but they are undone by their pride, anger, and ignorance. We might as well have been visiting South Africa or Mozambique, and the cold, hard, and foreign nature of the subject renders Finnegan's clear, concise writing style academic and esoteric.

This is of course not William Finnegan's problem. In fact, he should be praised for his meticulous, honest, and earnest study of how the America has failed so many of its children. But it's too meticulous, honest, and earnest. Mr. Finnegan makes us stare at the poverty, the hopelessness, and the despair, and we are forced to see our hypocrisy, greed, and selfishness. "Cold New World" is hard to digest, almost impossible to enjoy, and we much force ourselves to stomach what we read.

We begin in New Haven, where drugs are destroying communities. The second part in deep east Texas is by far the most interesting because the main character sheriff Nathan Tindall is so entrepreneurial, resourceful, and optimistic -- exactly what every other protagonist in the book fails to be. After the refreshing and exhilirating encounter with Tindall we are transported to a migrant community and then gangland.

We have no complaints against William Finnegan as tour guide. He is endlessly knowledgeable, has spent decades refining his craft, and sincerely helpful. But we never wanted to go on the tour in the first place, felt the tour exhausting and taxing, and cannot possibly recommend the tour to anyone else. And that's also why the tour was so important to take.

It is hard to overstate how much I liked this book.

Finnegan reports on young Americans living in compromised circumstances. He could probably have found this story in any community. He chose four places -- the inner city of New Haven, rural Texas, a California exurb, and the farm fields of Washington state.

In New Haven, you see the logic of the choices faced by inner city kids, and the struggle to get by in a world where so many people have so much. That first section is good, but its probably also the one with a theme that matches the expectations of readers.

The rest of the story is more complicated. In rural Texas, Finnegan shows a system of justice dominated by local sheriffs that serve to balance the interests of everyone in a pothole politics that reminds me of Chicago aldermen. It also shows the footprint of race upon land use.

In Washington state, the young people fail to understand the social justice aspirations of their migrant farmworkers parents. These kids don't feel that they belong anywhere: not in the consumerist schools of Washington state, and certainly not in the underdeveloped cinder block streets of their parent's Mexico.

In California, Finnegan shows how economic insecurity among parents trickles down into distorted opinions about race among a group of white power youth.

Finnegan uses a first person narrative approach that allows him to report and analyze what he sees as he travels. The analysis helps him to weave in local politics, history, and even some academic research. He does not interject his opinion into his writing, at least until the end of the book when he offers a conclusion.

When I think of peers for this book, a few come to mind: "There are No Children Here," by Alex Kotlowitz and "A Hope in the Unseen" by Ron Suskind are the two that most match its power. Even so, going to four places so different is a bit harder. Like catching lighting four times.