Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

What goes unexplored in Nomadland are the economic consequences of the cultural transformations that have shaped American life in the last 50 years. Bruder’s subjects are like a roadmap of that transformation. We’ve made divorce easy and more socially acceptable, but perhaps failed to warn people that it can “devastate your wealth,” as sociologist Jay Zagorsky noted in 2005 research published in the Journal of Sociology. “If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married,” Zagarsky wrote. Bad marriages will happen, of course, and some really do need to end, but the financial consequences of these events are not the fault of the American economy—as the stories of Bob and Don illustrate. Similarly, we now know that the surest way into poverty, especially for a woman, is to have children without a husband, and to do so without completing high school. Some 40 percent of women living under such circumstances are in poverty—and they face a formidable array of obstacles to climbing out of the economic cellar. Can we assign blame for this to the American economy—or does the stark rise in the number of children born out of wedlock bear the real blame?

Interesting review of a book that purports to dive into the lives of those unfortunate "disadvantaged" while blaming America and its economic woes.