Please join The New Press at WORD Bookstore in Jersey City for the launch of veteran journalist and author William Kleinknecht's States of Neglect: How Red-State Leaders Have Failed Their Citizens and Undermined America. Kleinknecht will be joined by Guy Sterling, a longtime reporter for The Star-Ledger.

In States of Neglect, journalist William Kleinknecht surveys the landscape of neglect in states including Texas, Florida, and Arizona through the experiences of a rich cast of characters. He visits environmental dead zones in the Texas Gulf region. He investigates Arizona’s abandonment of public education and its corrupt charter school industry. He shows how Mississippi’s denuded health care system has made the Magnolia State the sickest in the nation. And he explains how North Carolina allows its people to sink into poverty while catering to the needs of corporations. As a postscript, Kleinknecht proposes how progressive states on either coast might join in a compact of “progressive federalism” that uses their superior economic and cultural resources to counter the influence of the far right.