The Working Poor
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Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction
At the Edge of Poverty

Chapter One
Money and Its Opposite

Chapter Two
Work Doesn’t Work

Chapter Three
Importing the Third World

Chapter Four
Harvest of Shame

Chapter Five
The Daunting Workplace

Chapter Six
Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Seven
Kinship

Chapter Eight
Body and Mind

Chapter Nine
Dreams

Chapter Ten
Work Works

Chapter Eleven
Skill and Will

Epilogue

Notes
Index

About the Author

DAVID K. SHIPLER reported for The New York Times from 1966 to 1988 in New York, Saigon, Moscow, Jerusalem, and Washington, D.C. He is the author of six previous books, including the best sellers Russia and The Working Poor, as well as Arab and Jew, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He has been a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and has taught at Princeton, American University, and Dartmouth. He writes online at The Shipler Report.

Reviews

"This is clearly one of those seminal books that every American should read and read now." —The New York Times Book Review

" An essential book.... It should be required reading not just for every member of Congress, but for every eligible voter." —The Washington Post Book World

“Sensitive, sometimes heart-rending ... A vivid portrait of the struggle of the working poor to acquire steady, decently paid employment.” –Commentary

"Insightful and moving.... Shipler writes with enormous grace [and] he captures the immense frustration endured by the working poor as few others have." —The Nation

"Welcome and important.... Shipler manages to see all aspects of poverty—psychological, personal, societal—and examine how they're related.... There is much here to ponder for conservatives and liberals alike." —The Seattle Times

This guided and very personal tour through the lives of the working poor shatters the myth that America is a country in which prosperity and security are the inevitable rewards of gainful employment. Armed with an encyclopedic collection of artfully deployed statistics and individual stories, Shipler, former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer winner for Arab and Jew, identifies and describes the interconnecting obstacles that keep poor workers and those trying to enter the work force after a lifetime on welfare from achieving economic stability. This America is populated by people of all races and ethnicities, whose lives, Shipler effectively shows, are Sisyphean, and that includes the teachers and other professionals who deal with the realities facing the working poor. Dr. Barry Zuckerman, a Boston pediatrician, discovers that landlords do nothing when he calls to tell them that unsafe housing is a factor in his young patients' illnesses; he adds lawyers to his staff, and they get a better response. In seeking out those who employ subsistence wage earners, such as garment-industry shop owners and farmers, Shipler identifies the holes in the social safety net. "The system needs to be straightened out," says one worker who, in 1999, was making $6.80 an hour-80 cents more than when she started factory work in 1970. "They need more resources to be able to help these people who are trying to help themselves." Attention needs to be paid, because Shipler's subjects are too busy working for substandard wages to call attention to themselves. They do not, he writes, "have the luxury of rage." 40,000 first printing. (Feb. 6) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

"This is clearly one of those seminal books that every American should read and read now." -The New York Times Book Review

" An essential book.... It should be required reading not just for every member of Congress, but for every eligible voter." -The Washington Post Book World

"Sensitive, sometimes heart-rending ... A vivid portrait of the struggle of the working poor to acquire steady, decently paid employment." -Commentary

"Insightful and moving.... Shipler writes with enormous grace [and] he captures the immense frustration endured by the working poor as few others have." -The Nation

"Welcome and important.... Shipler manages to see all aspects of poverty-psychological, personal, societal-and examine how they're related.... There is much here to ponder for conservatives and liberals alike." -The Seattle Times

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