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$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
Kathryn Edin, H. Luke Shaefer · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Shame Of The Nation: The Restoration Of Apartheid Schooling In America
Jonathan Kozol · 416 pages
"This is a book about betrayal of the young, who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended to make readers comfortable." Visiting nearly 60 public schools, Kozol finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the 15 years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. First, the segregation of black children is at a l
Class Matters
The New York Times · 268 pages
Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class
Noam Scheiber · 384 pages
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond · 442 pages
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a 2016 non-fiction book by American author Matthew Desmond. Set in the poorest areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the book follows eight families struggling to pay rent to their landlords during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Through a year of ethnographic fieldwork, Desmond's goal in the book is to highlight the issues of extreme poverty, afford
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Barbara Ehrenreich · 240 pages
The author's experience holding low-wage jobs in three parts of the U.S. in the late 1990s.
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
Matt Taibbi · 432 pages
"Matt Taibbi's genius is in untangling complex stories and making us care about them by providing striking moral clarity and a genuine sense of outrage. He has become among the most read journalists in America, leading the dialogue with epic Rolling Stone pieces that offer an "almost startling reminder of the power of good writing" (Washington Post). In this new work, he once again takes readers i
Gang Leader for a Day
Sudhir Venkatesh
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Katherine Boo · 256 pages
The dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
George Packer · 448 pages
There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America
Alex Kotlowitz · 323 pages
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc · 424 pages
The result of over ten years of immersion reporting, "Random Family" charts a tumultuous decade in which girls become mothers, mothers become grandmothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation.
Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
Eric Klinenberg · 312 pages
A “social autopsy” (Klinenberg’s phrase) of Chicago’s citizens and institutions after the July 1995 heat wave that killed over 700 people.
The People of the Abyss
Jack London · 224 pages
Book of Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote the experiences of living in the East End for months, staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote would be the same as would have supported an estimated 500,000 poor in London at the time.
Poor People
William T. Vollmann · 464 pages
“The book struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery and its quiet resignation. ‘Poor People’ allows the poor to speak for themselves, explaining the causes and consequences of their impoverishment in their own cultural, social, and religious terms.” -Publisher
How the Other Half Lives
Jacob A. Riis · 246 pages
A photographic collection exposing social conditions and daily life in the slums of late 19th century New York City. The title of the book is a reference to a sentence by French writer and philosopher François Rabelais, who famously wrote in his Pantagruel : "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives" ("la moitié du monde ne sait pas comment l'autre vit").
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
Paul Tough · 256 pages
Why do some children succeed while others fail? The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs. But in this book the author argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-con
The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City
Jennifer Toth · 267 pages
Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. This book is about them, the so-called "mole people" living alone and in communities, in the frescoed waiting rooms of long-forgotten subway tunnels and in pick-axed compartments below busway platforms. It is about how and why people move undergraound, who they are, and what they have to say
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
Hallie Rubenhold · 352 pages
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander · 301 pages
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a 2010 book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States, but Alexander noted that the discrimination faced by African-American males is prevalent among other minorities and socio-economicall
Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America
Leon Dash · 279 pages
For four years, reporter Leon Dash followed the lives of Rosa Lee Cunningham, her eight children, and five of her grandchildren, in an effort to capture the stark reality of life in the growing black underclass. As a black journalist troubled by the crisis in urban America, he wanted readers to share his discomfort and alarm. Dash's reports in the Washington Post touched a powerful nerve - 4,600
The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table
Tracie McMillan · 330 pages
"In 2009 McMillan embarked on a groundbreaking undercover journey to see what it takes to eat well in America. For nearly a year, she worked, ate, and lived alongside the working poor to examine how Americans eat when price matters"--Jacket.
Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won't Do
Gabriel Thompson · 317 pages
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010
Charles Murray · 407 pages
A critique of the white American class structure argues that the paths of social mobility that once advanced the nation are now serving to further isolate an elite upper class while enforcing a growing and resentful white underclass.
A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi
Aman Sethi · 226 pages
Depicts the lives of a group of homeless friends living in the Old Delhi Railway Station in India and the adventures and misfortunes they experienced that ultimately brought each of them there.