Street Fight: Mean America and the War on Sesame Street

Education in the United States is under attack, but there’s still one street that’s full of hope. Sesame Street was created in 1969 with the aim to help less fortunate children better prepare for school. Since then, it has been viewed by an estimated 190 million children across 150 countries and prepared generations of children for kindergarten. Without Sesame Street, where would they go?

Within the walls of Sesame Workshop’s idea factory, the people behind the show have been battling forces that would have snuffed it out long ago. Its federal funding has been slashed, despite it being the gold standard of children’s educational programming, and only through heroic efforts has it avoided cancellation. Meanwhile, Sesame Workshop continues to address educational and social needs in children that would otherwise go unmet.

Street Fight weighs how the ongoing experiment in educating preschoolers through television has served the world’s children, while also revealing the limitations and complications that left some viewers behind. Drawing from over two hundred interviews and including oral histories from the show’s performers and executives, journalist Michael Davis pulls back the curtain to look at the people and events that shaped Sesame Street from the 1990s to the present. From public scandals to behind-the-scenes tensions, Street Fight traces the evolution of a beloved American institution against the backdrop of a rapidly changing media landscape.

All too often, Sesame Street only makes the news during a media firestorm. This book recounts what happens the other 364 days of the year