Title: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
Author: Jeff Hobbs
Genre: Biography
Pages: 432
Rating (out of 5 stars): ****1/2
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: Robert Peace was born in the projects close to Newark, NJ. His mother's sacrifices, combined with his innate brilliance, helped him get into private schools and eventually into Yale. This book is essentially his biography, from his birth until his untimely death.
Thoughts: I've been telling everyone that I run into that they should read this book. I'm still mulling it over in my head, trying to think through what I've learned from it - what went so right and so wrong in this person's life? It might be that this book hit home for me personally because we lived near Newark in New Jersey, and then went from there to the Ivy League, so I can at least understand a bit the culture shock between the two. But I think anyone would benefit from reading this book. My favorite aspect is that it doesn't have a moral. It simply tells the story and you, the reader, have to disentangle the personal, familial, cultural, racial, and societal forces that helped Robert Peace but ultimately undid him. Read it.
Disclaimer: A fair amount of swearing in this one, and lots of drugs. Some references to sex, but it is quite clean in that regard. But given the subject matter, this was a surprisingly clean book.
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