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Summary: A Journey of self-discovery
Review: This is a wonderful book. It's a powerful look at a young man's journey to self-discovery, the obstacles that come with it and the courage to face the unknown and overcome it.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: This is an incredibly compelling story. Realizing all the obstacles Cedric had to overcome to graduate from Brown (I assume he graduated) throws the comparatively easy life of a middle class white person into new perspective. It's like he was a tiny, beautiful flower alone in a big patch of weeds, with the weeds constantly blocking out the sun and taking all the water. Cedric was just an incredible kid. When you really think about it, the drive, ambition, work ethic and self-confidence that propelled him beyond his circumstances are mind-boggling. I feel enormous admiration for him.One of the most interesting aspects of the narrative is the author's invisibility. The book really has two main characters, Ron Suskind being the other. Ron tailed Cedric for 4 years, which is pretty incredible in itself. I wonder if Ron's presence and Cedric's awareness of impending publicity pushed him to push himself harder. I also wonder why Ron didn't help Cedric's mother come up with the $2700 she needed to avoid eviction. Isn't that kind of like a cameraman recording someone drowning without trying to help?
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Summary: Challenging look into education in America
Review: I really liked this book! I was sometimes turned off by the writing style (the characters invariably were put on high pedestals and seemed over-glorified). However, having said that, the story raises so many intersting issues, particularly for those of us who are educators. In following this young man's journey from poverty to Brown University, we encounter the dynamics of education in America (I was frequently reminded of Kozol's "Savage Inequalities") and question the validity of the notion that everyone has an equal access to education; what it means to teach 'diversity' to contemporary students; and meeting the reality that many, many bright students who could be potentially successful in higher education are lost within a culture that most don't seem to care much about. The book is at once depressing and inspiring. I think anyone who teaches school and is interested in the dynamics of racism and diversity should read this book, if nothing else for the insight gained from understanding the experience of one kid that seems so personal yet universal. My gratitude to the author for bringing this story to print!
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Summary: A gripping narrative about a real-life human being
Review: When we meet Cedric Lavar Jennings, he has already overcome an incredible amount by excelling academically at his dismal highschool in D.C. "A Hope in the Unseen," masterfully takes us with him as he fights his own doubts and his background. It is an inspirational story of perserverance and endurance. It is one of the best books that I have read, and gives a clearer picture of the struggle it takes for teens and young adults to find themselves and their place. I am a teenager, and this book has helped me to gain a better understanding of myself and my possibilities. I recommend "A Hope in the Unseen," not to the middle aged educators, businesspeople, and politically aware, but to teenagers and young adults who don't quite know who they are yet.
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Summary: Compelling; a masterful job by a gifted journalist
Review: Unlike another reader who reviewed this book in this space, I find that Ron Suskind did a masterful job of portraying Cedric Jennings in a way which was both dispassionate and intriguing. Young readers are especially interested in this book: I teach high school, and many students have asked to borrow the copy they see me with. I am reminded of I've Known Rivers, by Sara Lawrence Lightfoot. In her work, she relates the lives of distinguished African Americans who have had to reliquish some of their ties to their cultural identity in order to "make it" in a White world. Happily, Cedric Jennings does not see the need to do this.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading; a learning experience.
Review: This book was recommended to me by a collegue and I looked forward to reading an old story with a new twist: experiencing culture shock within your own culture. While the differences between the books main character, having come from an impoverished inner city, and the people he meets in college was there, I was disappointed by the heavy doses of author bias present in the story. Ron Suskind does a good job of following Cedric Jennings and learning about every detail of his life, but it seems as though he finds it difficult to merely report events, discussions and actions without weighting them with suburban classifications and observations. I do still recommend the book not becasue of its views on urban public education (like those in "Savage Inequalities") or representations of life in low-income areas (as presented in "There are No Children Here"), but because it is difficult to find non-fiction works with information on differences and reality-checks within the sub-groups that make up modern day Americans.
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Summary: Uplifting story of the will to succeed
Review: The is one the best books that I have read in years. Suskind was masterful in his capturing of a truly uplifting story of perserverance. As a father of a gifted eight year old boy, my bookstore search was for insights into the education process from a child's prospective. Cedric Jennings drive to achieve against all odds is a story that should be mandatory reading for all middle school students. Some of the language may be a bit strong at that young age and children may have to be prepped for the context, but there is a clear message for our kids to learn in this well crafted story. I look forward to reading the next chapter in Cedric's story. I wish him and his mother well, and hope Ron Suskind continues to give us the pleasure of reading his works. Ted Pippin Arlington, Virginia
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Summary: Outstanding! Buy this book.
Review: The book is very well writen. It is more captivating than much fiction I've read. It is touching without being sentimental. It is a real eye-opener for a white, middle-class person to read. After the OJ trial, and before the Clinton scandal, race seemed the most important issue in America. This is an important contribution to understanding some of those issues.
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Summary: I was unsettled by both sides of the educational equation
Review: I felt angry to read of the difficulties Jennings had living and going to school in inner city D.C. Why do people have to pull down those who have vision and ambition? And not just in the inner city I'm afraid. There is an anti-intellectual, anti-learning, anti-caring about anything climate nationwide. This book just reveals it to us more than we like to admit to ourselves. Then I felt angry to read of the airheadedness and political indoctrination at Brown University. He (the young man who was the subject of this book) poured his heart and soul into "making it" and was "it" worth it? All in all, it was a good read. Well written and thought provoking.
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Summary: "It is a long journey from one edge of America to the other"
Review: Ultimately, A Hope in the Unseen, is about trying to succeed in an academic/professional world that is biased to the white well-to-do/upper-middle-class world. Suskind quotes Stephan Wheelock, a young black instructor at Brown, 'I am constantly having to play catch-up with guys who've spent the past five years speaking three languages, visiting Europe, and reading all the right books. Here, at Brown, they say, 'Don't worry, you're all equal, starting on the same footing. Ready, set, go!' They just don't get it. Where I come from, people don't go to France to study. A trip to France is a big deal. I haven't been reading all the right books since I was twelve and then have some Rhodes Scholar Daddy tell me the rest. I didn't have that kind of access, access that could empower me.' This book highlights the disparity in opportunities between those who come from economic privilege that affords them a cultural advantage, and those who come from econimic worlds where getting from pay check to pay check -- survival-- is first and foremost. (Suskind points out more than once that the black, hispanic, and asian students from upper-income homes know how to play the academic game.) But for many kids from lower economic stratas, be they people of color or white, the social stigma of doing well in school and going to college (Who do you think you are? Do you think you're better than the rest of us?)can be a powerful deterent. And many of those who do do well and go on to college find themselves in a world they never knew existed -- they must play the catch-up game constantly. Ron Suskind's book illustrates that culture of class, not to mention race, is alive and well in this country. In the book's epilogue Suskind observes, "It is a particularly long journey from one edge of America to the other these days, and a passage few can manage." I would hope that this book begins a dialogue between educators and those who care about our young people on how to make that journey shorter and more accessible.
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