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33rd out of 568 books
—
750 voters
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
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 br...more
Paperback, 352 pages
Published
January 4th 2005
by Vintage
(first published January 4th 2004)
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I often get into discussions with my father-in-law about the state of the nation, problems facing workers and companies, and especially the role of the government. My father-in-law will often say the phrase, "People just need to work harder" in response to my queries about how to get people out of poverty or dead-end jobs. Well, I heard that phrase one too many times, so I decided to read David Shipler's book to find out if this "American Dream" is as easy to do as it sounds.
It's not easy at all...more
It's not easy at all...more
The guy at Barnes & Nobles, where I was trading in a complete Shakespeare, which I already had, for this, which I didn't, told me that this was a great book because it shifted some blame for the problems of the poor onto the poor, thus holding them accountable and providing room for personal responsibility. I had already fought with the guy once, which was why I held my tongue this time and didn't mention that he was hardly making a compelling case to me. So for a long time, I didn't actuall...more
Summary: Poverty is caused by complex interactions between personal and societal/business/governmental failures. The poor are affected more strongly by small mistakes/misfortunes that snowball due to lack of safety net.
The most heinous problems to me were sexual abuse/domestic violence.
p. 162 At the extremes of the debate, liberals don’t want to see the dysfunctional family, and conservatives want to see nothing else. Depending on the ideology, destructive parenting is either not a cause or the...more
The most heinous problems to me were sexual abuse/domestic violence.
p. 162 At the extremes of the debate, liberals don’t want to see the dysfunctional family, and conservatives want to see nothing else. Depending on the ideology, destructive parenting is either not a cause or the...more
"Nobody who works hard should be poor in America," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Shipler. Few would disagree with that statement, yet even fewer would agree on how to reduce the factors that cause poverty in America. Presenting individual case studies, Shipler exposes the vicious social and economic injustices that define the working poor. (How can you buy false teeth if you don't have a job? But how can you get a job without teeth?) At times, he lets his frustration get the better of him
...more
Nov 30, 2008
Crawfords444
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
High School Students. Adults caught in the 2008 economy.
Although written in 2004, this book tells it like it really is. There are good tips to ge gleaned for persons downsizing their budget in these difficult times.
The book "tells it like it is" with a healthy dose of realism, especially the chapter on the schools. I spent a year in rural Mississippi, a year and a half in rural west Tennessee and eight years in the intercity public schools. My students and parents fit the descriptions of the "middle class working poor" and the truly impoverished....more
The book "tells it like it is" with a healthy dose of realism, especially the chapter on the schools. I spent a year in rural Mississippi, a year and a half in rural west Tennessee and eight years in the intercity public schools. My students and parents fit the descriptions of the "middle class working poor" and the truly impoverished....more
An eye-opening portrayal of the difficulty of dealing with poverty in this country told from the perspective of people dealing with it every day. This book about the plight of the working poor in America is good but a little dated. It is copyright 2004, before the real sh*t hit the fan in 2008. The problem of poverty is extremely complex. Each person afflicted with it is different and has their own set of issues, be that addiction, abuse, health problems, lack of education or opportunities, raci...more
As David K. Shipler makes clear in this 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...more
Shipler chronicles the lives and stories of the working poor, examining the interconnected challenges of health, education, community, abuse, hunger, finances and addiction that keep many marginalized individuals at the edge of society. He highlights holistic program approaches that integrate resources to maximize impact, including a medical clinic that employs social workers and lawyers to better advocate for clients. In addition, Shipler exposes the broken systems of public and private assista...more
okay, maybe i shouldn't even be adding this book because i barely read five pages of it before i had to put it down. to give background, one of the things on my list of things to do is to read a book about poverty to better inform my job. i found this one through jj smith (to be clear, he had not read it), but let me tell you, john j and everyone else, i don't like this book in the slightest. first, to be an asshole, it doesn't tell me anything i don't already know through work and newspapers. s...more
This books describes typical situations of people that are working, but are still poor, and talks about many related issues: how people get into that situation, how many people get out of it and how that happens, and how we can reduce the amount of that in the future.
The idea that people in America can pull themselves up by their bootstraps is attractive to most of us. A lot of people view that as the essential American story. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's a pretty rare event.
If your s...more
The idea that people in America can pull themselves up by their bootstraps is attractive to most of us. A lot of people view that as the essential American story. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's a pretty rare event.
If your s...more
It is the comprehensive nature of Shipler's work that makes it so outstanding. The book is a perfectly complete telling of the "working poor" on three counts: the stories, the context, and the writing.
The stories are deep due to his persistence in interviewing the same people over several years, his follow-ups with secondary characters such as doctors and case workers, and the diversity of the narratives in terms of location, employment, and background.
He contextualizes each individual story i...more
The stories are deep due to his persistence in interviewing the same people over several years, his follow-ups with secondary characters such as doctors and case workers, and the diversity of the narratives in terms of location, employment, and background.
He contextualizes each individual story i...more
Aug 05, 2010
Megan
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
non-fiction,
read-as-ebook
My favorite quote: "Workers at the edge of poverty are essential to America’s prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole. Instead, the forgotten wage a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff. It is time to be ashamed."
I thought the perspective Shipler had was fairly balanced between blaming/pointing at circumstances that are not necessarily the working poor's fault (i.e. attending a poorly funded public school with few resources to ad...more
I thought the perspective Shipler had was fairly balanced between blaming/pointing at circumstances that are not necessarily the working poor's fault (i.e. attending a poorly funded public school with few resources to ad...more
Although there weren't any astonishing revelations (and I'm not sure that's even possible with this subject matter) the author did an excellent job of conveying the fragile interrelationships between education, housing, health, upbringing, transportation, health insurance (etc.) and how one problem can trigger a devastating financial setback. He writes, "For practically every family, then, the ingredients of poverty are part financial and part psychological, part personal and part social, part p...more
ok so i liked this book. it is mass-market muckraking. the solutions at the end assume a market economy (which is totally safe for mass-market i guess!) so it ends up being a set of harrowing tales of life in or near poverty with the end result being, "well, it's all connected, so we need more funding for ... everything." which like yes! but also, hey, a living wage? he almost-kinda-doesn't really mention the possibility that walmart etc. paying wages as low as they can possibly get away with be...more
Wow. Picks up where Nickel and Dimed left off--a far-reaching critique of both liberal and conservative approaches to poverty reduction and a comprehensive look at the diversity of the working poor in America. If you're into Project Runway (come on, fashionista policy wonks, I know you're out there), the section on the political economy of the fashion industry is especially fresh and fascinating.
This book... was not an easy read. It can be often a bit depressing or unsettling, if only for the stories of real people that it presents to the reader. With that in mind, it tries to take a good, solid, objective look at the issue of poverty in the U.S. and how this group of people survive from day to day. It doesn't try to follow ideology, but instead just examines the lives of people who fit in this demographic and takes an honest look at what they have to endure and fight against daily. It...more
Wow- a real must read for middle class America, as we often smugly presume to know how to "fix" those who are down on their luck. Shipler carefully walks the reader through the hopeless and difficult road out of poverty by sharing personal stories from those trapped under the belly of American prosperity. He shares stories of babies in Boston dying of malnutrition and women on welfare forced to work but unable to care for their children as a result. He describes how inadequate housing, services,...more
BOOK CRITIQUE FOR CLASS ASSIGNMENT:
In 1997, while many Americans appeared to be enjoying the benefits of a soaring economy, author David K. Shipler was on a quest to unveil a faction of society that was hidden in plain sight, America’s working poor. Shipler set out to bring to light the forgotten America, those living at or under the federal government’s official poverty line, employed yet still struggling to survive, day by day. In hopes of vanquishing the invisibility cloak that obscured a lar...more
In 1997, while many Americans appeared to be enjoying the benefits of a soaring economy, author David K. Shipler was on a quest to unveil a faction of society that was hidden in plain sight, America’s working poor. Shipler set out to bring to light the forgotten America, those living at or under the federal government’s official poverty line, employed yet still struggling to survive, day by day. In hopes of vanquishing the invisibility cloak that obscured a lar...more
Particularly interesting in its details.. Shipler follows individuals in their daily struggles and obviously kept in touch over time. The sympathetic voice from which he writes sets an overarching emotion that is a bit distracting at times. Maybe it is necessary, so that you truly dig into the policies behind poverty and welfare, but I'm not sure. The last chapters are the best, with down-to-earth dissections of different methodologies and policies that can and may change the way the chips fall....more
this is a very good book to read if you know a little about the policy problems facing the working poor and want to get a better idea of the human stories of people affected by them, or if you don't know anything about the daily lives of the working poor and need a good illustration of the thicket of problems trapping them in poverty.
however, if you are looking for a systemic analysis of which policies and procedures create this poverty trap and perpetuate these conditions, this is not the book...more
however, if you are looking for a systemic analysis of which policies and procedures create this poverty trap and perpetuate these conditions, this is not the book...more
Everyone should read this book, especially if you hold strong opinions about public assistance. The topic is especially relevant during the current political and economic climate. It's just not as simple as political ideologues would like to make it, and I thought the author did a good job of showing how -- if we could just get politics out of the way -- doing the right thing wouldn't be so difficult. It is possible to make headway in a way that would benefit society as a whole and actually save...more
This book is essential reading for those working in poverty law or with lower income people in any field. It is very well-written with raw, honest and compelling stories of individuals from all walks of life. David Shipley explores the intersecting causes and effects of poverty including health, low wages in dead-end jobs, lack of job training/skills, failing schools, poorly administered government and non-profit programs that only address a piece of the problem, and misunderstanding by those in...more
When it comes to issues as complex as poverty, it's often much easier to lean on facile stereotypes than it is to really dig deep and understand the myriad forces that contribute to economic struggle. THE WORKING POOR is an excellent book to combat that inclination, as it simply presents the stories of several different people--black men and women, Korean immigrants, white families in the northeast falling off the bottom of the blue collar ladder--and goes deep to understand how a combination of...more
I can't remember any book I've read where the synopsis was so accurate. This is a brilliantly humane examination of the multiple forces at play for the poor. It's raw, depressing, unflinching and most of all superbly written. Shipler bluntly delves into the lives of the people he's featured in the book, following them over multiple years and offering a comprehensive look at the circumstances that have and continue to shape their lives.
The book doesn't apply to the poor just in America, it's an...more
The book doesn't apply to the poor just in America, it's an...more
Very interesting book describing a very complex and multi-faceted problem. The book was written about 10 years ago, so its references to a "recession" are not to the one we faced in 2008 but to an earlier one. But problems of the working poor do not seem to change much in periods of relative prosperity and decline - they seem to stay about the same. The book left me feeling that the problems of poverty are very difficult to combat because they are so multi-faceted. The author gave some simple ad...more
I'm reading this book for our church's "Windows on Poverty" adult education series, which will include a play about and by homeless people, lectures and book discussion. I think this was a good choice for the book. The past two years, focusing first on War and Peace and then on Islam, we read novels (March and The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf). But I can't think of a novel that would have covered the diversity of poverty in America the way this book did. One thing I believe will be especially hel...more
This book is not what you would call a pick-me-upper. I had to set it down sometimes, and come back to the stories of so many families fighting on so many fronts. It was exhausting to read about the way so many have to fight just to stay above water and hold their families together (or wishing sometimes they would let some parts of the family go).
It was a reminder that if you are able to spend time reading books for fun (much less spending more time commenting on them online!), you are very ble...more
It was a reminder that if you are able to spend time reading books for fun (much less spending more time commenting on them online!), you are very ble...more
If you don't know much about poverty, this book may prove useful to you, but go in with eyes open. Shipler is at his best when he's letting the poor folks he speaks to speak for themselves. However, he is very much a liberal, and while he's talking with poor people we also get sympathetic interviews with bosses, managers, job trainers, "tough love" social workers, and the like. He praises people who shape themselves (and allow themselves to be shaped) into well-behaved, obedient workers set on c...more
David Shipler has written an unforgettable book about the lives of the working poor. His insights provide a true window on the lives of the less fortunate, where a ten dollar bill is a real event. A true eyeopener. I have read segments of it to my business classes. It should be required reading for all high school and college students to blast them into the realm of reality by seeing how narrow a band can separate them from being a have or a have not, by how much education and training they moti...more
I appreciated that this book was sympathetic but realistic about people in poverty. And I remember the desperate need to splurge on something (eating out at a fast food restaurant, renting movies, whatever) for a momentary pick-me-up when you can't afford to fix your washing machine.
I recommend this book to pretty much everyone. I certainly know a handful of co-workers who could benefit from holding judgment until they've walked in someone else's shoes.
This book details how poverty handicaps vir...more
I recommend this book to pretty much everyone. I certainly know a handful of co-workers who could benefit from holding judgment until they've walked in someone else's shoes.
This book details how poverty handicaps vir...more
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David K. Shipler reported for The New York Times from 1966 to 1988 in New York, Saigon, Moscow, Jerusalem, and Washington. He is the author of four other books, including the best sellers Russia and The Working Poor, and Arab and Jew, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He has been a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and has...more
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Jun 11, 2008 10:08am