Really, all of America should read it, as it may open the eyes of many who have bought into the racialist myth of America’s founding and greatness peddled by those purveyors of hate. Cashill’s newly-
released memoir, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethic Flight from America’s Cities, is fascinating reading on several levels.
On a surface level, the book is a touching tale of growing up in a lower middle class, hard-working, Irish-American family in the 1950s and 60s in Newark, once one of America’s great cities. Cashill’s literary style combines humor, frankness, and clear, succinct sentences to make for a very readable, and relatable, important new work of nonfiction. One almost feels a part of the author’s family, as he recounts coming of age on Myrtle Avenue in the small, but cherished home that his police officer father had struggled mightily to earn enough money to buy, having suffered the privations of the Great Depression and a rough childhood.
Moreover, Cashill’s half-century of writing in-depth, highly researched and riveting books concerning such topics as the crash of TWA 800 off of Long Island in 1996 and the crash of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s airplane also, interestingly, in 1996, makes the book interesting reading on a second level – in detailing the destruction of this former powerhouse of a city.
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