David K. Shipler
As David K. Shipler makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideologyâ€”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 poorâ€”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 capitalâ€”each life another aspect of a confounding, far-reaching urgent national crisis. And unlike mostworks on poverty, this one delves into the calculations of some employers as wellâ€”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.
Nonfiction,Sociology,Economics,Politics,Social Issues,Poverty,Social Issues,Social Movements,Social Justice,Social Science,History,Education
The Working Poor: Invisible in America