- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group; 1 edition (Feb 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0375408908
- ISBN-13: 978-0375408908
- Product Dimensions: 16.8 x 2.9 x 24.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,652,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
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Product Description
Product Description
“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.
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.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
David Shipler takes up where Barbara Ehrenreich left off in Nickel and Dimed. Where Ehrenreich examined the working poor with a microscope, Shipler uses a wide-angle lens.
Shipler interviews the working poor, poor people who are out of work, employers, case workers, and teachers of poor children. So the title is a little misleading, in that this book takes on American poverty, not just those who are working.
While Ehrenreich got involved personally by becoming one of the working poor, Shipler observes and sympathizes. His sympathy is understandable, but at times I wondered just how much it was affecting his journalistic objectivity. Many times he relates events, apparently told to him by the people he interviewed. He doesn't qualify these stories in any way and they are told as if he was telling them first hand. His chapter on Leary Brock, an inner city woman who eventually became successful, overcoming great odds, tells her story from the time she was in high school to her fiftieth birthday. Shipler narrates, complete with quotations, as if he were there, without notes or sources. Was he there?
In any case, these are compelling stories, about migrant fruit pickers living in squalor, about malnourished infants whose parents don't know how to care for them, about teachers who keep a supply of granola bars on hand to feed hungry children so they will be able to concentrate on the lesson, about a maze-like system that keeps people in poverty from getting the tools they need to break out.
The Working Poor is a passionate book that sees democracy as the solution to poverty. Those who want the system to change to meet their needs will have to vote, he says, and vote in large enough numbers so that legislators will have to listen to them. Maybe that will work, but even Shipler expresses doubts, as he acknowledges that people tend to vote their aspirations rather than their complaints.
Format:Paperback
I found this book really upsetting. As some of us might be thinking about the next car we want to buy or how we want to remodel our kitchen, there is an invisible group in our society that works hard in low-paying jobs and still is on the verge of poverty. In this book, the author profiles such working people and illustrates to readers what is like to be part of this group from their point of view.
Even though these citizens are willing to work really hard, they simply struggle to survive and because they constantly live on the edge, a minor event can tip them over to financial ruin. They may be abused at work, underpaid, forced to work off the clock, treated like slaves, but are still trapped and have no opportunities for advancement. When they get sick and cannot afford the doctor, they may be forced to use an emergency treatment for which they are billed later on. Of course, they cannot afford the bill because if they did, they would not be using the emergency treatment in the first place. This is a really good book and I would recommend it to anyone.
- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
Even though these citizens are willing to work really hard, they simply struggle to survive and because they constantly live on the edge, a minor event can tip them over to financial ruin. They may be abused at work, underpaid, forced to work off the clock, treated like slaves, but are still trapped and have no opportunities for advancement. When they get sick and cannot afford the doctor, they may be forced to use an emergency treatment for which they are billed later on. Of course, they cannot afford the bill because if they did, they would not be using the emergency treatment in the first place. This is a really good book and I would recommend it to anyone.
- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
Format:Hardcover
In spite of grueling hours and brutal conditions, hard work is no guarantee of prosperity in the American economy. So writes journalist David Shipler in this exhaustive study of the folks left behind by the American economic boom. Shipler talks to factory workers in New Hampshire, farm workers in North Carolina and garment workers in California. He paints a picture of a predatory economy with little room for the unsophisticated and unskilled. This work, which was nominated for a prestigious National Book Critics' Circle Award, is ambitious in its scope and compelling in its detail. Some readers, however, might chafe at Shipler's refusal to accept either liberal or conservative formulas: after presenting ample evidence of the poor's own culpability for their plight, however partial, he blames both, an indifferent society and family dysfunction for poverty. We strongly recommend this sweeping study to employers and to anyone interested in the seemingly intractable gap between rich and poor.
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