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A review by slichto3
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs
2.0
I feel very torn about this book. There's a lot that's extremely valuable, but there's also a lot that's not so much. On the whole, I think it's probably an important read, but it's not that great of a book.
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is a true story about the life of Robert Peace, from birth until death. Rob was black, and born in a poor part of Newark, NJ. He had a tough childhood - his father went to prison for a crime he didn't commit, his mother struggled to make ends meet for his family, and there was the constant pressure of more negative influences - but he also had a lot of support and an amazing intellect. After high school, Rob went to Yale, then worked a few jobs while balancing multiple goals for the future: going to graduate school, traveling the world, building the beginnings of a real estate empire, and making the money to fund these goals by dealing marijuana. Ultimately, the drug dealing became a little bit too conspicuous, and Rob was murdered. Rob's life is way, way more complicated and interesting, but this is at least a brief summary.
The book really dives into these details. The book also spends a lot of time going through details about all of Rob's friends as well, including a lot of stuff about the author himself and how he related to Rob. Because of this, the book feels a bit bloated. There's a lot here, and it's not all that well organized. It jumps around from idea to idea without feeling logical. The chapters are long, and there wasn't a clear reason to me what any given chapter was about. It was hard to really keep connected to the story. This led to two problems with this book: it was unclear, and it was boring. Which is so frustrating, because Rob Peace's life is really fascinating and a story worth telling! It's just not told very well in this book.
Another thing that was pretty frustrating about this book is that you don't ever really get to hear from Rob himself. We're only hearing second hand about Rob's life, and the sources we're hearing from are dramatically different. You get this weird picture of Rob that is mostly told, not shown. Sometimes, the author will tell you one thing about Rob, but then some of the story's that he tells seem to show something different. This is made worse because Rob often tries to project himself differently to different people. Since we never hear from Rob, we don't really know who he is at all. At the end of the book, I tried to trace through why Rob did certain things in his life, and... you can't really know. There are a lot of possible answers, and the author throws them out there, but nobody knows. So, reading the book, you can be kind of confused and wonder what kind of person Rob really was.
A real strength of the book, though, was showing what life is like for someone in Rob's position growing up: poor, black, and living in a poor area. It puts you at an incredible disadvantage. It makes the idea of inequality so much clearer and more human. It's frustrating, because it's so unfair, but it's important to understand that frustration, because maybe then we can stop ignoring the problem and start trying to more effectively fix it. It's also a story that we don't get to hear all that often. There aren't a lot of books about people like Rob, which is kind of ridiculous.
Some other, smaller issues I had with the book: the way the author writes himself into it, the idea (supported by the subtitle) that Rob's life was valuable only because he went to Yale, and a mostly plodding writing style. I'd recommend reading this book for the valuable content, but I'd also warn you that it's not the best read. Still, read it and tell me what you think!
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is a true story about the life of Robert Peace, from birth until death. Rob was black, and born in a poor part of Newark, NJ. He had a tough childhood - his father went to prison for a crime he didn't commit, his mother struggled to make ends meet for his family, and there was the constant pressure of more negative influences - but he also had a lot of support and an amazing intellect. After high school, Rob went to Yale, then worked a few jobs while balancing multiple goals for the future: going to graduate school, traveling the world, building the beginnings of a real estate empire, and making the money to fund these goals by dealing marijuana. Ultimately, the drug dealing became a little bit too conspicuous, and Rob was murdered. Rob's life is way, way more complicated and interesting, but this is at least a brief summary.
The book really dives into these details. The book also spends a lot of time going through details about all of Rob's friends as well, including a lot of stuff about the author himself and how he related to Rob. Because of this, the book feels a bit bloated. There's a lot here, and it's not all that well organized. It jumps around from idea to idea without feeling logical. The chapters are long, and there wasn't a clear reason to me what any given chapter was about. It was hard to really keep connected to the story. This led to two problems with this book: it was unclear, and it was boring. Which is so frustrating, because Rob Peace's life is really fascinating and a story worth telling! It's just not told very well in this book.
Another thing that was pretty frustrating about this book is that you don't ever really get to hear from Rob himself. We're only hearing second hand about Rob's life, and the sources we're hearing from are dramatically different. You get this weird picture of Rob that is mostly told, not shown. Sometimes, the author will tell you one thing about Rob, but then some of the story's that he tells seem to show something different. This is made worse because Rob often tries to project himself differently to different people. Since we never hear from Rob, we don't really know who he is at all. At the end of the book, I tried to trace through why Rob did certain things in his life, and... you can't really know. There are a lot of possible answers, and the author throws them out there, but nobody knows. So, reading the book, you can be kind of confused and wonder what kind of person Rob really was.
A real strength of the book, though, was showing what life is like for someone in Rob's position growing up: poor, black, and living in a poor area. It puts you at an incredible disadvantage. It makes the idea of inequality so much clearer and more human. It's frustrating, because it's so unfair, but it's important to understand that frustration, because maybe then we can stop ignoring the problem and start trying to more effectively fix it. It's also a story that we don't get to hear all that often. There aren't a lot of books about people like Rob, which is kind of ridiculous.
Some other, smaller issues I had with the book: the way the author writes himself into it, the idea (supported by the subtitle) that Rob's life was valuable only because he went to Yale, and a mostly plodding writing style. I'd recommend reading this book for the valuable content, but I'd also warn you that it's not the best read. Still, read it and tell me what you think!