An Evening with Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Kristof, an op-ed columnist at the New York Times, and WuDunn, coauthor of several books with Kristof, stay in the neighborhood in Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. They take a look at the big picture of the fading American working class by looking at the smaller picture of Kristof’s childhood home in rural Yamhill, Ore. Close to a quarter of the kids on Kristof’s old school bus died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide or reckless accidents. The stories may be particular to one corner of the country, but they are all too representative of other places, some in our own backyards.
But Tightrope also offers hope and solutions and stories of resurgence and resilience, from a recovering opioid addict who is helping others to stay clean, to a woman in Arkansas who has devoted her life to helping teens.
Kristof and WuDunn coauthored Half the Sky and A Path Appears. Kristof was previously New York Times bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He won his second Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his columns on Darfur. He and WuDunn won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2009. WuDunn worked at the New York Times as a business editor and foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Beijing. She now works in banking.