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Nite at the Races at Our Lady of Hope

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Wilkes-Barre to reduce summer hires, not open Kistler pool

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Ben Bradlee Jr.&#8217;s book &#8220;The Forgotten&#8221; &#8212; a reference to the phrase Donald Trump often used to describe his constituency, &#8220;the forgotten people&#8217;&#8217; &#8212; will be a sociological history, exploring why and how voters stunned the world by electing who they did and how America is changing as a result.</p><p>And Luzerne County will be the main focus.</p><p>Bradlee said with its 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is a critical state in any presidential election, but it was especially so last year.</p><p>Bradlee said Luzerne County, &#8220;home to economically depressed Wilkes-Barre, near Scranton,&#8221; hadn&#8217;t voted for a Republican president since 1988 and supported President Obama twice.</p><p>Reagan Arthur, publisher of Little, Brown and Company, announced the acquisition of Bradlee&#8217;s book &#8212; The Forgotten: How the Abandoned People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America.</p><p>Bradlee said he has spent about three weeks in Luzerne County so far, and he has interviewed 50 people, but will be spending much more time here in the coming months and talking to more voters.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve found the folks there to be friendly, frank and revealing about their reasons for supporting Trump,&#8221; Bradlee said Friday. &#8220;I&#8217;m excited about using the county as a window into what happened and why in last year&#8217;s historic election.&#8221;</p><p>Bradlee said he&#8217;s delighted to be writing the book for Little, Brown.</p><p>&#8220;And I&#8217;m delighted to be using Luzerne County as a prism through which to explore the undercurrents of one of the most historic elections in American history,&#8221; he said.</p><p>In talking about the 2016 presidential election, Bradlee noted &#8220;a stark turnabout&#8221; after two straight Obama victories.</p><p>&#8220;Donald Trump trounced Hillary Clinton in Luzerne County by 26,237 votes &#8212; a 20-point win which provided Trump nearly 60 percent of his victory margin in Pennsylvania,&#8221; Bradlee said. &#8220;It is not a stretch to say that Luzerne County won Trump Pennsylvania &#8212; and perhaps the presidency, to the extent the state&#8217;s demographics and voting patterns were similar to those in Michigan and Wisconsin, the other two states on which the election turned.&#8221;</p><p>Bradlee said while millions of Americans greeted Trump&#8217;s election with shock and confusion, for millions of others he offered solutions to problems that had worried them for decades &#8212; problems like under-employment, illegal immigration, globalization, excessive government regulations, and the demise of traditional manufacturing jobs.</p><p>According to a news release about the book, &#8220;The Forgotten&#8221; will be a result of extensive interviews with Trump voters in Luzerne County, a former Democratic stronghold.</p><p>&#8220;The Forgotten&#8221; will reveal what a county-level examination of the election of 2016 shows about an economic divide between &#8216;high-output&#8217; urban America and &#8216;low-output&#8217; rural America,&#8221; the release stated. &#8220;For residents of largely rural Luzerne County, the campaign also exposed a gulf of culture and class that fell largely on rural vs. urban fault lines.&#8221;</p><p>The release goes on to say that the election result can be seen as the revenge of the rural poor, working class and middle class who felt largely ignored and condescended to by the Democratic Party.</p><p>&#8220;Electing Trump was a knock-down-the-door vote for change, and a rebuke to the unseen ruling classes and elites who they felt have changed their lives without their consent,&#8221; the release about the book stated.</p><p>Reagan Arthur said Bradlee&#8217;s tireless reporting and careful analysis &#8220;put a historic election into new perspective, in a book that will stand as a landmark account of a major turning point in our political history.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Bradlee </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_ben_bradlee.jpg</photo0><caption0>Bradlee </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Bill O&#8217;Boyle</p><p>boboyle@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>About the author</strong></p><p>&#8226; Ben Bradlee, Jr., is the author of the &#8220;The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams,&#8221; a New York Times bestseller published in 2013.</p><p>&#8226; &#8220;The Forgotten&#8221; will be his second book for Little, Brown.</p><p>&#8226; Bradlee was a reporter and editor at The Boston Globe for 25 years, including a period when he supervised the Pulitzer Prize-winning Spotlight team investigation into sexual abuse by priests in the Boston archdiocese.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Bill O&#8217;Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Luzerne County focus of Bradlee’s book on Trump