Synopsis
In this trenchant and sensitive study of Americans at the lower end of the economic ladder, a journalist documents the struggles of working people with low-wage jobs who are caught in the trap of poverty. Shipler looks at the everyday lives of workers both urban and rural, and reveals patterns of behavior and circumstance that severely restrict both families and singles. He examines those close to them, including employers, as well as those far-removed, such as politicians, who affect their lives, and he offers remedies to a problem that he believes is not without a solution. Shipler's analysis succeeds, at least, in making these workers visible. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2004-02-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 319 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 22.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
“Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. The term by which they are usually described, ‘working poor,’ should be an oxymoron. Nobody who works hard should be poor in America.” —from the Introduction
From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Arab and Jew, a new book that presents a searing, intimate portrait of working American families struggling against insurmountable odds to escape poverty.
As David K. Shipler makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideology—hard, honest work. But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low-paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse. Shipler exposes the interlocking problems by taking us into the sorrowful, infuriating, courageous lives of the poor—white and black, Asian and Latino, citizens and immigrants. We encounter them every day, for they do jobs essential to the American economy.
We meet drifting farmworkers in North Carolina, exploited garment workers in New Hampshire, illegal immigrants trapped in the steaming kitchens of Los Angeles restaurants, addicts who struggle into productive work from the cruel streets of the nation’s capital—each life another aspect of a confounding, far-reaching urgent national crisis. And unlike most works on poverty, this one delves into the calculations of some employers as well—their razor-thin profits, their anxieties about competition from abroad, their frustrations in finding qualified workers.
This impassioned book not only dissects the problems, but makes pointed, informed recommendations for change. It is a book that stands to make a difference.
Industry Reviews
"A sobering work of investigation, as incisive--and necessary--as kindred reports by Michael Harrington, Jacob Riis, and Barbara Ehrenreich."
Kirkus Reviews (12/15/2003)
"[T]his is clearly one of those seminal books that every American should read and read now....Shipler never shies away from noting the employer's power, but by embracing complexity, and trusting the reader to be up to the task, he burns off the easy illusions of hero versus villain that so often addle journalism."
New York Times Book Review - Ron Suskind (02/15/2004)
"[An] insightful and moving chronicle of working poverty after welfare reform....The value of THE WORKING POOR goes beyond powerful writing, however. It is rich in causal arguments."
Nation - Katherine Newman (03/15/2004)
"...David K. Shipler's THE WORKING POOR has an old-fashioned commitment to telling the whole story."
Salon - Laura Miller (12/07/2004)
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