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One of The Economist's Best Books of the Year!
In this "affecting...intriguing...heartbreaking" (Booklist) coming-of-age memoir, Rob Henderson vividly recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities, and pioneering the concept of "luxury beliefs"—ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the less fortunate.
Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met, ultimately shuttling between ten different foster homes in California. When he was adopted into a loving family, he hoped that life would finally be stable and safe. But divorce, tragedy, poverty, and violence marked his adolescent and teen years, propelling Henderson to join the military upon completing high school.
A "vivid, insightful, poignant, and powerful" (Nicholas A. Christakis, author of Blueprint) portrait of shattered families, desperation, and determination, Troubled recounts Henderson's expectation-defying young life and juxtaposes his story with those of his friends who wound up incarcerated or killed.
As he navigates the peaks and valleys of social class, Henderson finds that he remains on the outside looking in. His greatest achievements—a military career, an undergraduate education from Yale, a PhD from Cambridge—feel like hollow measures of success. He argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments, and he illustrates the ways the most privileged among us benefit from a set of social standards that actively harm the most vulnerable.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 20, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781797168289
- File size: 225484 KB
- Duration: 07:49:45
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Rob Henderson's flat tone may reflect the substance of his life. Still, his material engages as he describes how his three names represent the first people who abandoned him. He frames his early life as a series of eight moves from one foster home to the next. As he describes his eventual adoption by a loving family as he neared his teens, his characterizations deepen, and the dialogues he recounts have more strength. Poverty, tragedy, and substance abuse subside as he attends Harvard. His inexpressive delivery throughout this somewhat cerebral section of his memoir works well with his reflections on his outsider status and a system that benefits those who come from privilege. S.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
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