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'Masterpiece' Evening Standard
'Fascinating' The Economist Best Titles of 2024
In this vivid coming-of-age memoir, Rob Henderson recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities – and what he learnt from seeing life from both sides of the tracks.
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. He was wrong: tragedy, poverty and violence marked his adolescent years.
An unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation, and determination, Troubled recounts how Henderson eventually managed to find an escape route through the military, which led to an academic career at Yale and Cambridge. As he reflects on the fate of many of his friends – drugs, death, prison – Henderson never escapes the feeling of being on the outside looking in, or a sense that his academic achievements are hollow compared to the love and protection that comes from stable family life. He dissects the hypocrisies of contemporary social class and shows how the most privileged among us benefit from a set of ‘luxury beliefs’ that actively harm the most vulnerable.
Rave Reader Reviews
‘Eye-opening and heart-breaking’
‘Inspiring’
‘Incredible’
‘Wow’
‘Powerful and thought-provoking’
- Rob Henderson has an amazing personal story: abandoned by his parents, chaotically brought up in Californian foster homes, he made it to Harvard and Cambridge and is now a psychology researcher
- Rob Henderson is famous for coining the term ‘luxury beliefs’ as a way of analysing the modern class/status system
- He has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and has appeared on numerous podcasts
- He has 124k followers on Twitter and a hugely popular substack with forty thousand subscribers
- He lives in the UK
- Will appeal to readers who enjoyed Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance and Educated by Tara Westover
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