Synopses & Reviews
A heartfelt, and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets — and of one's own nature — when he returns home.
When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert's life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, with his father in jail and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale, where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics. But it didn't get easier. Robert carried with him the difficult dual nature of his existence, "fronting" in Yale, and at home.
Through an honest rendering of Robert's relationships — with his struggling mother, with his incarcerated father, with his teachers and friends and fellow drug dealers — The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace encompasses the most enduring conflicts in America: race, class, drugs, community, imprisonment, education, family, friendship, and love. It's about the collision of two fiercely insular worlds — the ivy-covered campus of Yale University and Newark, New Jersey, and the difficulty of going from one to the other and then back again. It's about poverty, the challenges of single motherhood, and the struggle to find male role models in a community where a man is more likely to go to prison than to college. It's about reaching one's greatest potential and taking responsibility for your family no matter the cost. It's about trying to live a decent life in America. But most all the story is about the tragic life of one singular brilliant young man. His end, a violent one, is heartbreaking and powerful and unforgettable.
Review
"Mesmeric...[Hobbs] asks the consummate American question: Is it possible to reinvent yourself, to sculpture your own destiny?...That one man can contain such contradictions makes for an astonishing,tragic story. In Hobbs's hands, though, it becomes something more: an interrogation of our national creed of self-invention....[The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace] deserves a turn in the nation's pulpit from which it can beg us to see the third world America in our midst."
The New York Times Book Review
Review
"A haunting work of nonfiction....Mr. Hobbs writes in a forthright but not florid way about a heartbreaking story."
The New York Times
Review
"I can hardly think of a book that feels more necessary, relevant, and urgent."
Grantland
Review
"The Short Tragic Life of Robert Peace is a book that is 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."
The Los Angeles Times
Review
"Devastating. It is a testament to Hobbs's talents that Peace's murder still shocks and stings even though we are clued into his fate from the outset...a first-rate book. [Hobbs] has a tremendous ability to empathize with all of his characters without romanticizing any of them."
Boston Globe
Review
"It is hard to imagine a writer with no personal connection to Peace being able to generate as much emotional traction in this narrative as Hobbs does, to care as much about portraying fully the depth and intricacy of Peace's life, his friends and the context of it all...it is an enormous writing feat...fresh, compelling."
The Washington Post
Review
"[An] intimate biography...Hobbs uses [Peace's] journey as an opportunity to discuss race and class, but he doesn't let such issues crowd out a sense of his friend's individuality....By the end, the reader, like the author, desperately wishes that Peace could have had more time."
The New Yorker
Review
"Ambitious, moving...Hobbs combines memoir, sociological analysis and urban narrative elements, producing a perceptive page-turner....An urgent report on the state of American aspirations and a haunting dispatch from forsaken streets."
Kirkus, Starred Review
Review
"Peace navigated the clashing cultures of urban poverty and Ivy League privilege, never quite finding a place where his particular brand of nerdiness and cool could coexist....[Hobbs] set out to offer a full picture of a very complicated individual. Writing with the intimacy of a close friend, Hobbs slowly reveals Peace as far more than a cliché of amazing potential squandered."
Booklist, Starred Review
Review
"The resulting portrait of Peace is nuance, contradictory, elusive, and probing....At its core, the story compels readers to question how much one can really know about another person....VERDICT: An intelligent, provocative book, recommended for any biography lover."
Library Journal
About the Author
Jeff Hobbs graduated with a BA in English language and literature from Yale in 2002, where he was awarded the Willets and Meeker prizes for his writing. Hobbs spent three years in New York and Tanzania while working with the African Rainforest Conservancy. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife.