How do ambitious young men grapple with an unemployment rate in urban Ethiopia hovering around fifty percent? Urban, educated, and unemployed young men have been the primary force behind the recent unrest and revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. Daniel Mains' detailed and moving ethnographic study, Hope Is Cut, examines young men's struggles to retain hope for the future in the midst of economic uncertainty and cultural globalization. Through a close ethnographic examination of young men's day-to-day lives, Hope Is Cut explores the construction of optimism through activities like...