This was a fantastic book that will stay with me for sometime. Very though provoking, and a great snapshot of an era in time..

I reviewed this book on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/bkBR5nyNVbA?si=WHWQoCJzz1qlym62&t=41

Audio script:

"Faust's "memoir—about her childhood in the US south and her growing commitment to activism in the Civil Rights Movement and other movements—is a magical combination of memoir and history—focused on the cultural forces at work throughout the country and across the globe—forces that shaped the world she was born into. She puts her own growth into the context of the history of the mid-twentieth century, and she also frames her analysis of that history with the context of her own childhood and young adulthood.

"The most powerful part of her book to me was her discussion of how she was shocked to suddenly SEE the world of racial hierarchy that surrounded her. As a young child, she had taken all for granted, never thinking to ask questions or even wonder about why her family and community functioned as it did. Again, I’ll talk about this book much more fully in a future video. What I want to talk about today is that we watch her as a young person suddenly become conscious of the fact that segregation and even racial violence was at the bedrock of her society, completely surrounding her but in a way that white people seemed to take for granted, to accept without even thinking. It made her angry—partly to see the injustice but partly also because she felt lied to. WHY hadn’t people TOLD her what was happening? And then, we see her, in her shocked state, become FIERCELY committed to working for change.

Necessary Trouble is a compelling memoir about growing up as a white privileged female in Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s. Author Drew Gilpin Faust was drawn to activism even though, or possibly because, she was born into a family that had black servants. School segregation and the plight of Hungarian children sparked Faust to speak out on racial issues. One of the most compelling topics in the book is the impact Life magazine had on her upbringing and how it portrayed daily living and the glamour of the famous during her adolescence. Necessary Trouble is an original glimpse of two decades of American culture, that includes extensive notes and references.

I really enjoyed Necessary Trouble by Drew Gilpin Faust. She was Harvard's first female president, the culmination of a career spent breaking down barriers and fighting for social justice. The first part of the book is a family memoir, a genealogist's dream of an album tracing some of the extraordinary people she descended from, and her parents, who made her life harder and who would have preferred to perpetuate their racist, classist ideals in their daughter, but she had other ideas. For anyone that has ever felt compelled to become someone that their parents didn't want them to be, it's a relatable and engaging story.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

When an interesting book This woman named Dre w. Grew up in a very dysfunctional house in virginia. The chapters were very interesting too. Because explain what she was going through And the quotes can't explain it as well. She really wanted to be a tomb boy, but her mother was trying to make her into a Southern bell. She did not like that.. This is pretty amazing how she looked at the race. Relationships to her life and how much she did to do different things. For how she was very independent and a lot of her thoughts She went to the Concord school when she was 13. And this was really AI opener for because she could express who she really was. And not being a traditional school There was rigid rules and you really could not express yourself. She also wenty to Eastern Europe. Because she's bringing culture to these people. And you want to experience what it was like To be a teenager in communist countrie There were mixed people in this group. That everybody got along really well, . She also l Involved in the C I I Move it. I think this one was pretty amazing not day because she wanted to break away for her privileged life. I wanted to see the world as it was.

Drew Gilpin Faust and I grew up at the same time and we both attended "elite" women's liberal arts colleges: she went to Bryn Mawr and I went to Smith College. Aside from similar political and sociological views, our stories are quite dissimilar. Faust grew up in rural Virginia in a wealthy conservative Protestant family. I grew up in New Haven, where I was raised in a Jewish household by a single mother, who was a down-the-line Democrat. While we didn't struggle for basic needs, and my younger sister and I never went hungry, there was no money available for private schools or for formative trips abroad and to Southern states during the Freedom Riders' era. In Necessary Trouble, a phrase borrowed from the late John Lewis, Faust writes a clear and fascinating tale of her formative years, underplaying her leadership and intellectual abilities just enough for the reader to understand how deeply they ran. For readers in my generation, Necessary Trouble will evoke memories of a time in which we had hopes of a better future and for which many were willing to struggle. This book should be necessary reading for anyone who is struggling or interested to understand the roots of where we were post-WWII, when the GI Bill and huge federal investments in higher education and research activities, and when the Brown v Board decision demanded that "separate but equal" education was unconstitutional, raised hopes that we could erase the many sins of the pas that divided the country. Alas, those hopes have still not been realized. Highly recommended.

Drew Gilpin Faust’s memoir is that of an historian, one born into a privileged American southern family but who chafed at the various traditions and boundaries this privilege brought her. She was born in 1947, part of the baby boom generation, and very early wanted the freedoms her brothers seemed to have. She also wanted to learn, more than her mother had ever aspired to. This set up an adversarial relationship that never was resolved. She apparently asked uncomfortable questions early in life after hearing a news article about black schools being closed. Her sense of right and wrong formed young and does not appear to have altered in the years since.

In this memoir, Faust takes us through her life as a child in Virginia, to her days at Concord Academy in Massachusetts and on to college at Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania. Along the way, the ideas of justice, right and wrong, freedom, all develop more and more as this child of the 1950s becomes a teenager of the 1960s. She is involved in some of the major movements of the time and her involvement grew organically from the beginnings we have read about from the start. From a tour of Communist Eastern Europe, to the civil rights movement and Freedom Summer, and to the early days of the anti-war movement during the war in Vietnam, Faust had a role of some kind in events many of us saw at a distance.

Here the historian is defining herself through her lived history. From her father and grandfather who fought in WWII and WWI respectively, lost great uncles and others, there is a legacy of service coupled with the patriarchal background in her family. Sons were called, not daughters. Drew Gilpin Faust certainly found her own way to meet that call from her country.

Recommended for readers of memoirs and history.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for a copy of this book. This review is my own.

I love a good memoir and there are some amazing examples out there. The best connect the reader into the heart and mind of the writer, and do so in a way that seems to be deeply investigated. The reader is a confidant and a close friend, or at least that is the feeling, and what I was hoping for with Necessary Trouble. Unfortunately, this is less a memoir and more of a historical account of events surrounding the author and how she engaged in those events.

The research is excellent and the writing is solid for a historian. This issue is that the reader is held at arm's length. The life is discussed, but not investigated with a majority of the text dedicated to the story of injustice and uprise in the 1960s without a deep personal connection. There are moments, pieces of writing from that time included, etc. However, what this piece is missing is heart. It relies heavily on the impact of the times examined and the divides perceived, making this an average read.

There is also an itch at the back of my brain, when so much of a book about a white wealthy Virginian teen tells the story of the civil rights movement with lots of “we” and “us.” While she did spend two summers actively participating in outreach engagement, there is a lack of her personal story that makes this teeter on the line of problematic… that line that moves from telling her story to telling a Black story that should be told by Black voices.

Parts of this book seemed like a mirror to my own past, even though I am at least ten years younger than the author. However, I did grow up in Virginia and the attitudes and experiences she describes are so familiar that I could hear them in my head as I read the words. Her writing could have been just as applicable to my older cousins, who also participated in some of the civil rights volunteer work as Dr. Faust. I looked up to them as if they held all the wisdom of how to navigate the rapidly changing world.
But, alas, of course they did not.
To her credit, the author was very often in the right place at the right time to be a part of some history-making events, such as the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, and Dr. King's commencement address to the Bryn Mawr Class of 1966. She convincingly portrays her own engagement with civil rights and anti-war efforts in language that is authentic and compassionate. I do try to hear the voices of baby boomers who may be the exceptions rather than the rule because as a whole, this generation largely abandoned those early dreams for capitalist-inspired ones.
And though the author clearly has her faults, I am grateful to be able to read her story in the context of the times it describes as events unfolded. The writing is crisp and self-aware, even self-critical at times. Through it all this is a story of a young woman coming of age in an era of unquestionable privilege, who slowly realizes that it is her call to do what she can to do better. She fearlessly travels with a student group behind the Iron Curtain to wage peace and converse with real individuals living in completely foreign situations. She takes what she learns and applies it, even realizing that college may not be her best option for ultimately fighting for social justice and peace, but she does it anyway because it is expected, and she does sprinkle those at-the-time radical ideas throughout her college papers and essays.
I like this young near-radical Drew Gilpin. Seen through the lens of years, Dr. Faust does a remarkable job of making her real and relatable. I'd just like to know what comes next, how she navigated the years after graduation, as she assumed her career as a historian and author. Perhaps she'll humor us with that story soon.

Part family history, part American history, and part memoir, Necessary Trouble does something remarkable by demonstrating what drove one young woman from a well to do Southern family to eventually become one of America's leading historians on the South. Ms. Faust weaves together stories of her family and her upbringing in rural Virginia with the broader context of then-current events in ways that help illuminate how my own family reacted to the cultural upheaval of the 1960's. Valuable reading for any scholar of modern American history and culture.

So, I must admit my ignorance of who Drew Gilpin Faust is--I expected a story of teenage years just a little ahead of my own and thought I would laugh about how silly we were. This book was not that. It is not a story, but a collection of experiences of events that I have just read about and only knew about on the edges. But step by step, chapter by chapter) the reader is shown the foundations of her beliefs and the building blocks of what her life will be. (Yes, after finishing the book, I googled her.) What I would like to read now is what happened after graduation from Bryn Mawr and before Harvard, I hope she is reading this and and then sitting down to write.

I was excited to read this book, as in college I took two semesters of Drew Faust's classes: History of the South I and II. She was an excellent professor and teacher and I knew this book would be well-written and interesting.

While this is categorized as a memoir, it feels more like a cross between memoir and history book (as evidenced by the pages of bibliographic notes). The first several chapters feel more like a history book, as Faust sets the context for what is to come, describing the Virginia of her own childhood and that Virginia of those who came before her. Once Faust enters boarding school and college, the stories get more personal and "memoir-ish" as she shares her experience living through the 50s and 60s. While of course this is Faust's own life that she recalls, and she can't help being who she is -- a rich, privileged, white girl/women -- you can't help but wonder at times if this -- this recollection of the fight for black civil rights -- is really her story to tell? Is this who I should be learning about this from? Maybe not exclusively, but it is still interesting to learn how and why one white women became so involved in the movement ... to get that particular perspective. And for me it was of course great to get insight into the childhood and college years of one of my favorite college teachers, and understand why she went into her chosen field.

NOTE: Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book does a marvelous job of describing what the 60's were like for politically involved (mostly) young people. I lived through those times and have only painful memories of depressing years that, along with the Vietnam war, felt like they would never end. I think I had hoped for a more personal telling of her post-college life by Dr. Faust rather than a social history and a telling of how she experienced the events of that period. As I have long been a fan of the author's writings and her time as president of Harvard, I was hoping for more of a personal telling of those aspects of her life. But, for readers wanting a close-up view of the 60's and 70's in the US, this book will make for interesting reading.

I am the natural audience for Faust's memoir. Although I grew up north of the Mason Dixon line, my experience coming of age in the 60's was similar. She recounts the experience with great insight, and manages to point out that as passionately we felt and acted about social issues, there were lines and boundaries, internal and external, that we could not cross as white young women. Being part of the mostly male dominated activist movements was critical to forming the radicalization of women post-1968, and I look forward to a fascinating next installment in this outstanding historian's narrative. I now live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and was entertained to learn more of the history of those years in reluctant Virginia.

Drew Faust’s coming of age reflections are situated within the story of the country’s own development, specifically seeking to break free from constraints on the roles of women and deeply rooted racial prejudice. A distinguished historian of the South, she contextualizes her own experience growing up in Virginia and being educated in the northeast within larger political and social currents. It is most certainly the tale of a very privileged young woman, which she readily and repeatedly acknowledges. The book will resonate with others of similar experience as a near-perfect crystallization of the epiphany of recognizing, and then feeling impelled to try to dismantle, the falsehoods on which one has been raised. To others, it may, unfortunately at times, come off as lacking self-awareness, and yet her accomplishment in relation to her originally prescribed role is remarkable. Faust is an artful, engaging, funny, and sharply intelligent writer. The book is as-advertised in terms of covering her early life, but I found myself wanting very much to read her analysis of what came next, particularly with respect to her experience as a woman in the academy and in becoming and serving as Harvard’s first woman president.

I was very excited to read this memoir from a historian I have long admired. More than that, the description of this book seemed to combine many of my historical interests. It also didn’t hurt that the cover photo is the spitting image of my mom who was born a few years after the author (though my mother certainly lived a very different life in rural Alabama).

It started off interesting as I felt that the author’s vulnerability coupled with extensive family history underscored the tension at the heart of her own memories of coming of age in 1950s Virginia and the cracks that reverberated across her family’s generations. For millennials like me, I think the historical record woven into the author’s own life events would be perceived by many readers of my generation as insightful — particularly the examination of femininity. I even found myself jotting down perspectives I wanted to ask my mother & grandmother their takes on which I likely would have not considered had I not read this book.

Yet as the book went on, I felt less of the author’s honest self-inspection and more a sense of mere self-positioning within historical recollections. It was at that moment (specifically the chapter with many pointed Martin Luther King Jr. quotes) that I began to wonder why the author wrote this memoir or who her intended audience might be. It suddenly went from an endearingly conflicted childhood to myopic young adulthood with a tone-deaf sense of white saviorism. Had the book done more to avoid speaking for large swarths of people (the second half of the book generously employs “we” when describing a countercultural moment that deserves more nuance than granted) and involved more emphasis on an examination of her own bias & privilege (as the book description implies & the epilogue actually does the best job of — though far too late), then I think I would have no question as to the why of this memoir & a higher star rating.

Still I am grateful to NetGalley & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the opportunity to read this ARC. Not every memoir is for every person, and, although I was disappointed overall, I encourage those who would like to gain a certain perspective & historical account of American youth in the 1950s/1960s to pick this one up as you will get that told in no uncertain terms.

"Necessary Trouble" by Drew Gilpin Faust is an insightful and thought-provoking examination of the social movements that have shaped America over the past century. Through in-depth research and analysis, Faust delves into the history of political activism in America, from the labor movements of the early 20th century to the civil rights, feminist, and LGBTQ rights movements of more recent decades.

One of the book's greatest strengths is Faust's ability to weave together the personal stories of individual activists with the larger historical and political context in which they were operating. This gives readers a sense of the human faces behind the movements, and helps to bring to life the struggles and triumphs of those who fought for social change.

Another key aspect of the book is Faust's examination of the intersectionality of various movements and how they have influenced each other. The author demonstrates how the Civil Rights movement, for example, served as a catalyst for the feminist and LGBTQ rights movements.

Faust's writing style is clear, engaging and well-researched. She presents a balanced perspective and does not shy away from critiquing the movements and the people involved. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the history of political activism in America, and the role that social movements have played in shaping the country's political landscape.

Faust loved shool since the beginning of kindergarten at the age of four and at Bryn Mawr, she had become engrossed not only in the act of learning but also in the issues surrounding higher education, including its structure and future. Could it provide enough relevance to the social and political questions that preoccupied them? She had proven to herself that it was indeed possible.

Overall, "Necessary Trouble" is a well-written, informative and thought-provoking book that provides a valuable perspective on the history of social movements in America. It is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the history of political activism in America.