There Is Nothing For You Here - Finding Opportunity In The 21st Century

 A member of my book club recently heard Fiona Hill speak and suggested we read her memoir There Is Nothing For You Here - Finding Opportunity In The 21st Century (#1,351).  I soldiered through what I  felt was mostly a dry economics text.  When Ms. Hill wrote about herself and her own experiences, the book came alive.  Alas, those instances were too few and far between.

Let me sum up the lesson of this book: getting an education and/or vocational training, as much of it as possible, is the key to earning a decent wage and social mobility.  Using every contact and opportunity which presents itself, or that can be unearthed by diligent efforts will also be necessary.  

The problem is that it takes Ms. Hill over three hundred pages and multiple repetitions of these core ideas to make her point.

Her own examples drawn from her life are admirable.  She has been extraordinarily fortunate in pursuit of her goals, and she has proved that she possesses inner strength and integrity.

But that said, I think I stand by the principal that less is more.  Also, I was very unhappy with the way she characterized my hometown, trashing it as "Slummerville".  If you are going to call it a deindustrialized failure of a place, full of "have nots", at least do your homework.  Somerville, Massachusetts is east of Cambridge, not north, and it's obvious she hasn't revisited it since her college days at Harvard when she fell into the "gown" portion. It's very easy to look down on those you have to squint to see from your ivory tower. Talk about an economic turnaround! I do have to say that it made me wonder what else might be missed in this book since it was written in the 2020s, not the 1980s.  No positive updates here.

Definitely not for the casual reader.