Troubled

A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class

By: Rob Henderson

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Paperback | 29 April 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
290 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 12.9

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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'

Industry Reviews

"'A blistering analysis of poverty, class and the importance of family ... shared with fierce intelligence and clarity' - The Times

'Trenchant and remarkable' - The Bookseller

'Troubled is a serious piece of scholarship told through a redemptive but unsentimental autobiographical arc ... Rob Henderson is a rare young example of a dying breed:Cambridge scholar, public intellectual and unsentimental writer' - The Critic

'Masterpiece ... In a faux meritocratic world where everyone is ""equal"", and yet the wealthiest 10 per cent of households hold 43 per cent of all the wealth, Henderson's book highlights the concerning Orwellian development in society's ever-morphing chimera that subscribing to opinions - thought itself - has become commodified into social currency' - Evening Standard

'At once a fascinating memoir and an analysis of the ""luxury beliefs"" gripping American elites. A graduate of Yale targets the stupidity of what now passes for orthodoxy, but he does so without penning an angry culture-war screed' - TheEconomist, Best Titles of the Year To Date"

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