The term by which they are usually described, 'working poor,' should be an oxymoron. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. This impassioned book not only dissects the problems, but makes pointed, informed recommendations for change."Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. 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. 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. We encounter them every day, for they do jobs essential to the American economy. 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. 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 makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideology hard, honest work. 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.
Summary: An intimate portrait of poverty-level working families from a range of ethnic backgrounds in America reveals their legacy of low-paying, dead-end jobs, dysfunctional parenting, and substance abuse and charges the government with failing to provide adequate housing, health care, and education.
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