NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this “affecting…intriguing…heartbreaking” ( Booklist) coming-of-age
memoir Rob Henderson vividly recounts growing up in foster care enlisting in the US Air Force
attending elite universities and pioneering the concept of “luxury beliefs”—ideas and opinions
that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the less fortunate. 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. But divorce tragedy poverty and violence
marked his adolescent and teen years propelling Henderson to join the military upon completing
high school. A “vivid insightful poignant and powerful” (Nicholas A. Christakis author of
Blueprint ) portrait of shattered families desperation and determination Troubled recounts
Henderson’s expectation-defying young life and juxtaposes his story with those of his friends
who wound up incarcerated or killed. As he navigates the peaks and valleys of social class
Henderson finds that he remains on the outside looking in. His greatest achievements—a military
career an undergraduate education from Yale a PhD from Cambridge—feel like hollow measures of
success. He argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments and
he illustrates the ways the most privileged among us benefit from a set of social standards
that actively harm the most vulnerable.
