The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League Audiobook

Quotes

• “Nuanced and shattering.”

  — People magazine

• “A haunting American tragedy for our times.”

  — Entertainment Weekly

• “Heartbreaking.”

  — O, The Oprah Magazine

• “[Hobbs] asks the consummate American question: Is it possible to reinvent yourself, to sculpture your own destiny?…An interrogation of our national creed of self-invention.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “As much about class as it is race. Peace traveled across America’s widening social divide, and Hobbs’ book is an honest, insightful, and empathetic account of his sometimes painful, always strange journey.”

  — Los Angeles Times

• “A first-rate book. [Hobbs] has a tremendous ability to empathize with all of his characters without romanticizing any of them.”

  — Boston Globe

• “A riveting and heartbreaking read, as Rob Peace seems always to have been on the outside—the resented geek in the hood and the inner-city black man in the Ivy League.”

  — Amazon.com

• “Ambitious, moving tale of an inner-city Newark kid who made it to Yale yet succumbed to old demons and economic realities…Hardscrabble parochial schools, Yale secret societies, urban political machinations, and Newark drug gangs. An urgent report on the state of American aspirations and a haunting dispatch from forsaken streets.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• “A man with seemingly every opportunity loses his way in this compelling biographical saga…This is a classic tragedy of a man who, with the best intentions, chooses an ineluctable path to disaster.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “George Newbern’s calm but insistent voice sets the tone. His approach to the work is unhurried, and he makes sure we hear every word with the nuance it deserves in order to convey the author’s message. Newbern uses this same method with character voices, making sure that he differentiates them enough from the narrative and using enough inflection that we understand the people’s emotions and motivations.”

  — AudioFile

• “If The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace were a novel, it would be a moral fable for our times; as nonfiction, it is one of the saddest and most devastating books I’ve ever read, a tour-de-force of compassion and insight, an exquisite elegy for a person, for a time of life, for a valid hope that nonetheless failed. It is also a profound reflection on a society that professes to value social mobility but that often does not or cannot imbue privilege with justice. It is written with clarity, precision, and tenderness, without judgment, with immense kindness, and with a quiet poetry. Few books transform us, but this one has changed me forever.”

  — Andrew Solomon, National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon

• “A poignant and powerful can’t-put-it-down book about friendship and loss. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace takes you on a nail-biting, heartbreaking journey that will leave you moved, shaken, and ultimately changed. In this spectacularly written first work of nonfiction, Jeff Hobbs creates a singular and searing portrait of an unforgettable life.”

  — Jennifer Gonnerman, author of Life on the Outside

• “Jeff Hobbs has written a mesmerizingly beautiful book, a mournful, yet joyous celebration of his friend Robert Peace, this full-throated, loving, complicated man whose journey feels simultaneously heroic and tragic. This book is an absolute triumph—of empathy and of storytelling. Hobbs has accomplished something extraordinary: he’s made me feel like Peace was a part of my life, as well. Trust me on this, Peace is someone you need to get to know. He’ll leave you smiling. His story will leave you shaken.”

  — Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here