The best parts of her book are the vivid stories of her involvement with the civil rights movement and her anti-Vietnam War work ... There are places in Necessary Trouble... where that historian’s impulse to add context and detail slows her narrative down.
Part memoir, part political and cultural history, Faust’s is a keenly observed recollection of the forces that shaped her, though it may be frustrating to anyone in search of a deeper psychological portrait of this incredibly accomplished person ... Faust’s gift to this narrative is her knowledge of American history. She slots the signposts of her own life effortlessly into the how and why of the convulsions that shook the 1960s. She has a bone-dry sense of humor and is well aware of the irony of learning activism at institutions struggling with their own racist heritage ... At the same time, Faust maintains a distance that leaves the reader wanting more.
Exquisitely reasoned and elegantly written ... Faust’s memoir bears witness to an era whose divisions still reverberate today ... Throughout her memoir she grounds such incidents in the timeline of history, illustrating her argument that the historical times we are born are as formative as our personal past.
Both an engaging memoir and an essential social history ... One of the great contributions that Necessary Trouble makes to history is that it is both a personal accounting and an analysis of how one movement morphed into another ... While her reflections on the various dimensions of freedom are interesting, this reviewer would have welcomed a more personal, contemplative conclusion to the memoir that examined what she felt being back in Virginia.
Engaging and thoughtful, with vivid details and a wry sense of humor, Necessary Trouble is a nuanced portrait of midcentury America and an exploration of the ways it directly foreshadowed--and even created--our current political moment.
Faust pulls off a brilliant synthesis, grounding the macro stresses of the period in her quest to distance herself from her culture of origin and sharpen her political sensibilities.
The author is at her best when she immerses readers in a young person’s experience of the era’s moral urgency and passion ... An inviting, absorbing look at a privileged childhood in the segregated South and the birth of a questioning spirit.
