Customer Reviews

Your America: Democracy's Local Heroes

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You can't walk away from this book without feeling inspired to set about on some course of change. "Your America" profiles twelve seemingly ordinary people from vastly different backgrounds - including ethnic, social, political, professional - who have all stumbled across problems in their respective communities and set out on remarkable journeys to arrive at creative and original solutions towards fixing those problems. One of the many bright spots in each of their stories is that they don't simply complain - rather they work proactively toward resolving the issue, often despite considerable odds stacked against them. For example, there's Wynona Ward, a truck driver who suffered sexual abuse as a child and eventually got her law degree and formed an innovative organization aimed specifically at helping abused rural women. There's also Rueben Martinez, a modest Latino barber and factory worker who, in his mid-fifties, grew an enormous literary movement right out of his barbershop. Each story is vividly written, moving, often poignant and always stirring. Every chapter left me shaking my head in admiration at the determination, spunk and grit of these people - a book that truly lifts the spirit in a time of so much cynicism, doom and gloom.