Lessons from Lockport

Reviews / Votes

"Through the skillful use of personal stories, and interviews with his friends and neighbors in a small conservative town in New York, Jim Shultz opens a window into the hopes, dreams, and fears of those across the 'political divide.' In doing so, he reveals that the 'divide' is largely the creation of a partisan political culture, that floods us with divisive messages every two years. In fact, regardless of where we define ourselves along the political spectrum, most of us care and worry about the same things: our families, our jobs, our future. This book reintroduces us to each other and shows us a commonsense path forward...together." - Former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber

"For seven years a small-town newspaper columnist, Jim Shultz the newcomer to Lockport, New York, slowly built a following as he jumped into the fray on the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal's opinions page, exploring the culture and the simmering issues of a weathered but proud Rust Belt community. Jim gained traction not with his piercing observations about Donald Trump, but his natural affinity with the underdog, which shows equally in his political essays and his columns earnestly celebrating local life. Jim's observations about the folly of spy cams in local schools, about alienation within Lockport's long-established Black community, about unchecked political power contradicting and even mocking public interest, don't sit well with everyone, of course, but because he's as generous with his praise for the good in our community as he is with critiquing of its flaws, he keeps earning credit with readers who don't agree with him in every instance. Overall, Jim's probing of issues at every level has shown that people on so-called opposite ends of the spectrum actually have a lot in common. And, really, that's what Lessons from Lockport boils down to." - Joyce Miles, editor of the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

"Written by an observant progressive writer of op-eds in the newspaper of a small, Republican town in Western New York, this book takes you out of your bubble, whatever that is. Shultz gives us local issues-facial recognition technology in public schools, renewable energy, a police killing of a black man-seen through local eyes. He helps us like the people we disagree with. Memorable." - Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right