There is nothing for you here, by Fiona Hill

 

After seeing Fiona Hill's testimony before Congress and reading her earlier book about Vladimir Putin, reviewed here, I was eager to read her memoir about growing up in the northeast of England in a mining town that had experienced high unemployment after the mines were shut down in the 1980s under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. This is much more than a memoir, however; it's a deeply-researched exploration of how the economics of the U.K. and U.S. in the 1980s, and of Russia in the 1990s, decimated manufacturing and mining communities in those three countries leading to many of the same problems. Hill incorporates her own experiences to show how class discrimination is a significant barrier to personal advancement in the U.K. and the U.S., where it is exacerbated by racial discrimination as well. She closes the book with policy recommendations that could be helpful in transcending these problems.