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Poor People

3.63 of 5 stars 3.63 · rating details · 500 ratings · 104 reviews

because i was bad in my last life.
because allah has willed it.
because the rich do nothing for the poor.
because the poor do nothing for themselves.
because it is my destiny.

These are just some of the answers to the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asks in cities and villages around the globe: "Why are you poor?" In the tradition of James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Vollmann's Poor People 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.

There is the alcoholic mother in Buddhist Thailand, sure that her poverty is punishment for transgressions in a former life, and her ten-year-old daughter, whose faith in her own innocence gives her hope that her sin in the last life was simply being rich. There is the Siberian-born beggar who pins her woes on a tick bite and a Gypsy curse more than a half century ago, and the homeless, widowed Afghan women who have been relegated to a "respected" but damning invisibility. There are Big and Little Mountain, two Japanese salarymen who lost their jobs suddenly and now live in a blue-tarp hut under a Kyoto bridge. And, most haunting of all, there is the faded, starving beggar-girl, staring empty-eyed on the back steps of Bangkok's Central Railroad Station, whose only response to Vollmann's query is simply, "I think I am rich."

The result of Vollmann's fearless journey is a look at poverty unlike any other. Complete with more than 100 powerfully affecting photographs—taken of the interviewees by the author himself—this series of vignettes and searing insights represents a tremendous step toward an understanding of this age-old social ill. With intense compassion and a scrupulously unpatronizing eye, Vollmann invites his readers to recognize in our fellow human beings their full dignity, fallibility, pride, and pain, and the power of their hard-fought resilience.(less)

Hardcover, 314 pages

Published February 27th 2007 by Ecco

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Mar 02, 2010 Jimmy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sociology, journalism, william-t-vollmann

Who's intellectually well-equipped enough to define poverty? The answer is; no one. Who should we consult when this question begs at all of us, even the most reasonable? Maybe William T. Vollmann? Maybe base curiosity is the best sensibility to have when asking this question? So many questions arise. The symptoms, according to Vollmann, seem to be invisibility, deformity, "unwantedness", dependence, accident-prone-ness, pain, numbness, estrangement, and amortization. And how poetically defined t...more Who's intellectually well-equipped enough to define poverty? The answer is; no one. Who should we consult when this question begs at all of us, even the most reasonable? Maybe William T. Vollmann? Maybe base curiosity is the best sensibility to have when asking this question? So many questions arise. The symptoms, according to Vollmann, seem to be invisibility, deformity, "unwantedness", dependence, accident-prone-ness, pain, numbness, estrangement, and amortization. And how poetically defined these poverty stricken maladies are. Organized throughout a sociological survey of what poverty essentially entails, and more importantly means, Vollmann seeks, if nothing else, to comment on the how and why of people living hand-to-mouth. Montaigne opines, Agee opines, Orwell opines, etc. All of them, in their own way, have mentioned the problem, sought to analyze it, and have ultimately failed in their self-assured assessments. And so, but Vollmann achieves profound insight in paradoxical commentary; something that he's notoriously well known for.

Sunnee's plight strikes the reader with an almost immediate sense of conviction. She is the most obvious example of one who struggles, lives cognizant of her struggle, and basically cannot change. Surely it's the cheap Thai whiskey that aids her rest every evening. It's possibly because she can't read or write (her own name if nothing else). It's also possibly because her day-to-day existence is only perpetuated, and entirely dependent upon, her depraved desire to continue living. What of her daughter, the beautiful and hopeful Vimonrat? Will Vimonrat suffer the same series of ups and downs and disappointments of her mother? It's possible, almost apparently inevitable, taking into consideration her plight, and the plight of her family and lineage. Yet Sunnee isn't really poor, especially when her situation is comparatively assessed by her contemporaries; she has furniture at all. This is Vollmann's most powerful human study in the book, and they only get worse, or better as the case may be in context.

And Natalia. Such a sad Soviet case, mirroring Dostoevsky's Prince Mishkin in her unavoidable depravity. Then again, what if no police officer or local were to acknowledge her epileptic condition? Bad things happened to her as well. So many unfortunate tragedies, that to list them all, would be utterly tragic in itself. She's a bit more aware than Sunnee seems, albeit seemingly incapable of doing anything about it, her problem that is, the difficulty of not being able to adequately explain her illness.

Also ...

"If you hadn't gone to Chernobyl, what would your life be like today?
I would continue building houses, he shrugged. I would be able to have a decent job, and enough money."

If I hadn't been thrown into this horrible situation, one which seems to perpetuate itself in such an effortless manner, then maybe I could live well, be happier, eventually accomplish something, etc.

This in mind, Vollmann risks sounding like an overzealous bleeding heart; a privileged journalist merely snacking on the destitution of his subjects. But, as is the case with most of Vollmann's non-fiction, he manages to lacerate himself in the most naked, Bourdieuian sense. He offers meager financial aid, as he admits in a majority of the vignettes of Poor People, subsequently realizing that his help is frustratingly ineffectual. If he offers Sunnee money, then she will spend all of it on drink, even if the intention is to help Vimonrat with her education, even if Sunnee understands this. Which also seems like the typical Vollmann anti-solution; to comment upon a paradoxically convoluted social problem, offering, not answers and solutions, but useful commentary.

Both Sunnee and Natalia's predicaments stand as the strongest examples of poverty in the book. Vollmann proceeds to explore a world full of marginal fringe-dwellers and hopeless cases. He's sympathetic for sure, and his sympathy is honest, in that it confronts the impossibility of potential solutions. Capitalism never bodes well for a Vollmann subject, then again, neither does communism, or for that matter, unfortunate circumstances that can only be evaluated on ambiguous terms. Which works so well for a book that addresses such a difficult topic.

Poverty has so many dimensions of understanding. There is no universal definition that does it justice. Like so many of the world's ills and woes, it's a social malady that can, if nothing else, merely be reflected upon by some of the great thinkers of time. Vollman is one of them, traditionally and otherwise. Someone bold enough to address such complicated problems, yet honest enough to admit that he's not going to come up with a solution anytime soon. Who really has though? Appropriately enough, he cites Orwell in his introduction, and he definitely has his affinities with such morally upright thinkers such as Agee and Steinbeck, so is it really any wonder that Vollmann, much like his predecessors can merely offer helpful thoughts on the subject? Not really, because the joy in reading his books is in acquiring insight from a writer who has no delusions about what he is capable of when it comes to saving the world. (less)

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Sep 20, 2008 mandy rated it 4 of 5 stars

While not the sociological inquiry that more rigorous (read: academic) minds might require to be satisfied, I appreciate Vollman's reflections and noodlings on the concept of poverty. He is aware that he is open to accusations of 21st-century Levi-Strauss-ism, which in my opinion excuses a multitude of sins.

Vollman's greatest asset is his approach. He uses a four-way mirror to "show" the poor people across the globe. This mirror is comprised of: Vollman's first-person reflections; his reportage...more

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Sep 02, 2007 Lesley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Vollman writes like a poet. He says things well-mannered people don't say--but they do think: Poor people are always sick, they're clumsy, they have bad luck, they make bad decisions, they don't smell good, they live in disgusting hovels. He removes the veil of liberal guilt that censors these thoughts and makes you look at them. If you've ever had those reaction... you need to think about them again.

Vollman doesn't offer answers, or even necessarily insights. He simply observes. He observes the...more

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Sep 08, 2010 Thom rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ths is Vollmann's own travelogue series of interviews with poor people all over the globe. I began reading this in August with a view toward the November 2008 election and it just reduces me to tears sometimes because the kinds of suffering offered here are so unbelievably balanced by the gratitude that some of the poor feel that they still have so MUCH!. We are talking destitute here. ON the other hand, when I see the kinds of injustice inflicted on these people by most of the rest of us by imp...more

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Apr 19, 2008 Ben Gran rated it 1 of 5 stars

I didn't even finish this one. Fascinating premise (author travels the developing world, interviewing impoverished people and asking them, "why are you poor?"), but the writing was dense and overdone. Lots of navel-gazing, lots of focus on the writer's own internal monologue and personal journey; I would have preferred a more straightforward journalistic approach. The story should have been about the poor people, not about the writer's sophisticated liberal-arts-degree reactions to the poor peop...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

William T. Vollmann is an erudite, complex writer. Most recently, he explored 20th-century authoritarianism in the National Book Award?winning Europe Central (***1/2 July/Aug 2005). Poor People raised inevitable comparisons to James Agee's and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), about sharecroppers during the Depression. Yet Vollmann neither sentimentalizes nor romanticizes poverty. While some reviewers described Poor People as eye-opening and visionary, others criticized it as a

...more

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May 27, 2012 C.R. Miller rated it 4 of 5 stars

Like much of the Vollmann I've read, this floats between 3 and 4 stars, rating-wise. The level 5 material (in this case the parts when he latches on to a good narrative, like Snakeheads in Japan or snow-shovelers in Kazakhstan or his ongoing battles with homeless Americans in and around his own property) is compelling and top-notch, making me want to read on. But then there are those overly analytic parts, such as when he tries to construct systems for weighing relative poverty and richness; tho...more

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Jun 05, 2010 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone

"Do you consider yourself poor? Why are you poor?" These are the questions William T. Vollmann asks dozens of people from around the world--day laborers, beggars, shantytown-dwellers, victims of governmental neglect and corporate greed and the ineffectual bureaucratic nostrums of NGOs and aid-givers. The answers (or lack thereof, in some cases) he receives are enlightening in their very banality: "No job," or "The rich people keep us down," or simply, "Karma." I love Vollmann; the portraits he c...more

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Jul 05, 2007 Dennis rated it 3 of 5 stars

What better way to pontificate on both poverty at the global level and the individual level than travel the world talking to poor people and asking them why they are poor? Vollmann indeed does exactly that.

Poor People is an easily readable book. For those of you seeking anecdotes from poor people, this book is for you.

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Apr 09, 2013 Alexis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

"In an earlier chapter of this book I quoted the critic I. A. Richards on stock thinking. What makes poetry mediocre? Every item and every strand of meaning, every cadence and every least movement of the form is fatally and irrevocably familiar to anyone with any acquaintance with English poetry . . . the mental movements out of which they were composed have long been parts of our intellectual and emotional repertory and . . . these movements are few and simple and arranged in an obvious order.
...more "In an earlier chapter of this book I quoted the critic I. A. Richards on stock thinking. What makes poetry mediocre? Every item and every strand of meaning, every cadence and every least movement of the form is fatally and irrevocably familiar to anyone with any acquaintance with English poetry . . . the mental movements out of which they were composed have long been parts of our intellectual and emotional repertory and . . . these movements are few and simple and arranged in an obvious order.
Why are you poor? I'd asked the old man at Sumidagawa Terrace.
Because I don't have a job.
Call this answer fatally and irrevocably familiar, fatal being an especially appropriate descriptor because when conceived in such limited, monotonous terms (appropriately so, because poverty is limited and monotonous), his situation feels tautologically hopeless." p. 239

"Montaigne [wrote]: He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
[...] why should poor people, so often impoverished in thinking and learning as in everything else, be expected to learn how to live or how to die?" p. 244

"[...]if one group of people whom the market defines as poorer than other can actually live a richer life, then poverty itself may be more malleable, hence less to be feared, than other nightmares." p. 258

On intimidating thugs in his parking lot at night: "Were they poor? They must have been poor in something to entertain themselves in my parking lot..." p. 266

"I can respect those who hate me, and perhaps even like them; but it is an open question whether there can be such a thing as one-sided equality." p. 270

"What is my model? I don't believe that most of us know what anything means." p. 289

This final quote sums up a large number, possibly the majority, of my frustrations with this book. Vollman never defines his terms. He focuses on money, which makes sense, and a lot of sociology students want to dance around the issue of money. Let's not dance around it and call these people 'disenfranchised' or 'economically disadvantaged' or whatever, let's call them poor, as Vollman does. How does he know they're poor? Because they don't have any goddamn money. He is very precise about how little money they have, going so far as to make a table at the beginning of the book. Some of them have non-monetary resources, but he doesn't look too deeply into this, prefering to look at the big picture of how people define themselves. Questioning whether someone with a family or living on a farm might be better off seems to strike him as insultingly critical. But it begs the question of what it means to be poor, because each of his subjects is clearly poor in a different way.
There is a limit to how well a poor person can articulate why they are poor, of course, and he makes the excellent point that self-expression is one form of privilege. The book seems meant to be about the raw experience of talking to these people and not an answer or analysis of The Problem of Poverty. But Vollman's internal monologue moaning seems like a lot of shit you could easily sum up with terms like 'economically disadvantaged' or 'loss of agency.' When he dismisses in a paragraph the theory that the rich shoot themselves in the foot by allowing or causing people to be poor (in other words, looking out for the poor should appeal to our self interest), I wonder what anti-depressants he has stopped taking. I wonder if his political bent is more socialist than mine but I can't know that because he refuses to define his viewpoint or use abstract concepts to the extent that he would need to to share his ideas with typical readers. Perhaps that would ruin his authenticity. Or he thinks obscurity is the only way to avoid 'stock thinking.'
Maybe the problem is just that, because of my viewpoint, I saw interesting places he could go from the quotes above, and he never did. It's not just that I wanted Vollman to think how I would think, but literary tradition has it that an author has a clear idea with an extended argument or even a story of how his ideas have evolved so you can object to it, learn from it, perhaps accept it as your understanding of it improves. I wanted to know what Vollman thought. And I don't really.(less)

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Jan 21, 2013 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

*warning: ebook edition does not contain photographs*

William T. Vollmann has been in the back of my subconscious for some five years now; he gets constantly name-dropped in New Yorker articles and other intellectual pieces, being as he is part of the intellectual establishment--a graduate of the famed 'Deep Springs College,' wherein individuals develop deep souls and writing talent. :p

this is my first Vollmann, so I'm not absolutely blown away with how impressive the writing is; it is certainly...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Dmitry Myaskovsky rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: gratuitous-rambling, reviewed, non-fiction

As W. Vollmann travels the world to meet poor people, his interest never strays far from how he felt about this or that. It becomes quickly obvious that the "poor people" who are the supposed subject of this book are nothing more than a vehicle for the author to examine his aching conscience/consciousness. I was sick of this guy by the middle of the introduction, but kept trudging through hoping for who knows what. Aside from some mildly interesting travel-writing kind of exoticism, nothing rede...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Aaron Hook rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Ideally I'd give this a 3.5, but goodreads doesn't allow for such a precision review. This isn't Vollmann's best, but it's a great introduction to his writing. It's essentially a collection of connected essays, a few of which are great (pp. 225-255), and a few of which are a little slow. Over the course of about ten years of travels, he interviews poor people, asks them why some people are poor and some rich, and specifically why they themselves are poor. He throws in some good ruminations on po...more

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Feb 09, 2013 Dalya rated it 3 of 5 stars

جميل نوعا ما \الكتاب يفاجئك بحجم الفقر الهائل في هذا العالم
وعبارة عن تنقل الكاتب بين عدد من الدول والمناطق الفقيرة من بلدان عربية وأجنبية
ورصد للشخصيات والمقابلات وهُناك ..والملامح والتصرفات والأسباب والروائح النتنة والعالم من المهمل من هذا العالم وحين يغدو الشخص بلا أهمية !وتبقى سؤال لماذا نختلف في أهميتنا كأشخاص لما يُجرد البعض من منازلهم ويبقون في الشوارع للمجهول ولليالي السيئة ولا يعني أحد ,,وينام الآخرون وكأن لا أحد يتألم في هذا العالم
في نهاية الكتاب عدد كبير من الصور للأماكن والأشخاص

" ي...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Dianne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Vollmann introduces the reader to a rag-tag gallery of the world's impoverished, asking the same questions: Why are some people rich and some people poor? Do the rich have obligations to the poor? He receives a range of answers, some of which are rooted in philosophical or religious theories, some of which seem guided by malnutrition combined with physical and psychological despair. The electronic version appears to lack the photographs he references in the text, but for some reason I was gratef...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Ellie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, socio-political, favorites

This is a fascinating read. William T. Vollmann travelled around the world asking people in poverty why they thought they were poor. The answer? Poor People. Impossible to summarize as the answers are as numerous & personal as human beings themselves are.

The answers seem shaped by location and culture, though, as well as by individual personality. Some answers? Karma, fate, political oppression, God's love/hate, personal failure, societal failure...the lists go on.

And along the way, Vollman...more

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Oct 31, 2011 Heather rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: social-issues

This book does a great job of explaining different factors that create poverty and is especially good at humanizing the impoverished people he talked to and got to know. He took the time to get to know them so he could share their stories well, and the photographs also help the subjects feel real. One thing I don't like is that although the entire final section of the book is called "Hope," I really didn't feel hopeful at all at the conclusion of the book. It doesn't seem like any of the people...more

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Jan 24, 2012 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's possible that William T. Vollmann enjoys writing more than any person on earth. He also loves journalism; however, he claims to be a terrible journalist. If this is true, then I say journalism is a joke! Vollmann brings more passion to his subjects than anybody writing non-fiction today. He doesn't portray people in an "objective" light, or even try; he shows people the way HE sees them--and he makes this clear without feeling the need to constantly remind us of it. An important (and admira...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Ashley rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-books, social-issues, dude-i-dont-even-know, non-fiction

I was so interested in the premise of this book - a worldwide exploration of why people are poor. The poverty Vollman relates is shocking, but I was continually distracted by the writer as the narrator. It was ok towards the beginning if a little haphazard, but towards the end I felt like he just crashed and burned.

Ultimately, what I remember about this book is the author's continual reflections on himself, the drug use (I thought this book was about poor people?), and some random half-told sto...more

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May 19, 2009 Natali rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a hard book to read. It is like stopping yourself as you step over a homeless person and taking the time to get to know him/her. Why are they there? What do they think of their plight? Why are some people more fortunate than others? William T. Vollmann traveled the world and talked to the most desolate people. He tells their stories in this book. It is not an easy world to travel inside of.

I've never read an ethnography like this. Vollmann is not restrained by the formula of academic wr...more

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Jun 06, 2008 Ron Grunberg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

As William Vollmann lets us know in a short passage in this book, he is aware of the reputation he has for being a difficult read. I've always found some of his work impenetrable. But I was intrigued by his carrying on with his style, knowing many people might not be able to be reached. Because he is above all himself in his writing, and I like the style. I find that in his non-fiction he is much more follow-able. We look into a man reflecting after having compiled all his notes, as he puts into...more As William Vollmann lets us know in a short passage in this book, he is aware of the reputation he has for being a difficult read. I've always found some of his work impenetrable. But I was intrigued by his carrying on with his style, knowing many people might not be able to be reached. Because he is above all himself in his writing, and I like the style. I find that in his non-fiction he is much more follow-able. We look into a man reflecting after having compiled all his notes, as he puts into order the manuscript for publication. I imagine him sitting in a room, a quiet place, with recordings of his interviews and field notes--he traveled to far-flung places all over the world and, in this book, interviewed people on the subject of poverty: why are you poor? Who is to blame? Can you get out of this situation?--and he takes us through his thoughts, his self-doubts, his scenery painting, and it's altogether a majestic experience, on a densely private level, of a writer at work.

The people he picks, and pays for their time, to allow him to spend some hours or some days with him, yields up some terribly poignant stories. He speaks with the smelly, the toothless, the mauled-by-time beggars, people sleeping under bridges, drunks, criminals, just very very poor people. Most don't see a way out, many are trapped, it seems, in a culture that keeps them just at the level of perpetual poverty and which makes it almost insurmountable. I say insurmountable because to get out of the pictures of poverty these people paint, they'd have to use an imagination they don't seem to possess, but which, I imagine, could take a hold of them some day...perhaps after meeting an unusual visitor, such as Mr. Vollmann, who takes the time to listen, to visit isolated poor colonies, as it were?

One of the most poignant, or sad, stories, concerns a way out-of-the-way place in Kazakhstan, the former Soviet republic, where a big oil company has a huge plant and is polluting the whole town like crazy. I mean a lot of people who depend on this mega-business for their livelihood are suffering, their families are suffering, from chocking poisonous air, there are illnesses everywhere. But. There's not the slightest legal action or organized protest to the distinct possibilities their very lives are being shortened by the careless production. Instead there's a fierce protectionism and fear paid to the giant Corporation. Whether Corporation goons make sure of it, or the incentive of keeping a job takes care of any possible desire to remedy the foul air, Vollmann, upon meeting many of the workers and getting them to open up and promise to tell him "all" during their next meeting, when he shows up for that next meeting, the people who promise him they'll talk either don't show up or have changed their personalities completely so that there's not a chance they have anything to say anymore.

What can you do? (less)

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Feb 25, 2008 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays-and-or-assorted-criticism-an, 2008

I respect this book, and admire Vollmann as a writer. "Poor People" is an impressive work, but it suffers from an excess of awareness -- not in the sense that it's all about the author, but at everytime Vollmann sees the potential criticisms of what he's doing and, by pausing each time to face them, the book spins around itself, barely anchored by its main objecctive: to travel the world and ask poor people, "Why are you poor?"

Instead of resisting the inevitable comparisons to James Agee & W...more

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Oct 25, 2008 Matthew rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not certain what I can say about this book. Vollmann works hard to identify his biases and prejudices while telling these stories, but he is also aware of his limitations.

As for the people he interviewed, how much can we trust their reporting? Vollmann by his very nature is an outsider not only to their country's culture, but also to the culture of being poor. It's natural to conceal things from outsiders, and I think this is the greatest stumbling block, albeit one that cannot be avoided. (...more

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Aug 22, 2008 Jennefer rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is a wonderful example of qualitative research. Even if it never comes to a conclusion on how to solve the problem of poverty by any means - it definitely leaves the reader wanting to do something and pondering the question of why some people are rich and others are poor. Why are we the "lucky" ones and what do we do about it?

Vollmann is an excellent investigator and writer and explains impoverished circumstances well. Above all, he is honest with himself. He admits his biases and his...more

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Dec 04, 2007 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

Anybody care to guess what it's about?

I'm a fan of William T. Vollmann, and have been since I saw the famous gun-to-the-head photo of him in the now-defunct Icon Magazine. If you aren't familiar, he's the guy that wrote that seven volume treatise on the history of violence a couple years ago. In fact, this may be the first thing he's published since Rising Up and Rising Down.
Anyway, Bill traveled around the world and asked poor people why they thought they were poor, and recorded their answers....more

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Oct 12, 2010 Kim Godard rated it 4 of 5 stars

This gritty, unflinching view of what it's like to live in abject poverty in countries around the world has made me consider (and reconsider) my own attitudes toward money, treatment of those who have it and those who don't, and fears and stereotypes I hold. I expected the author to give opinions on what can be done to alleviate poverty, but no. His vignettes leave us with even more questions, but they are questions we should all ponder. In the end, the causes of poverty aren't as important as t...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012, poverty

So, is it me or does this author rub anyone else the wrong way. At best he comes off as a pretentious hipster at worst a condescending jerk. I really found his writing style insufferable. Probably the best example I can cite is when he is describing a subject he is interviewing. The style is third person narrative, then smack dab in the middle of this he breaks the fourth wall so to speak and says of the subject "I took a picture for you". I get that in his mind he's thinking it's a great litera...more

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Dec 27, 2009 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Excellent book. He approached his subjects in a compassionate manner but I feel like he didn't really dig as deep as he could have and often kind of stayed on the surface. He continually asked the 'why are you poor' question when, in my opinion, if they really knew, they probably wouldn't be 'poor'. He has something of a superiority complex when it comes to his work, but that can be overlooked. Overall, an excellent book on poverty and fate in a global sense.

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Feb 20, 2008 Shawn rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: recalcitrant mormons

What I like about this work is it's attempt at transparency on a volatile and continuously changing subject. In trying to define what "being poor" means, Vollman recognizes the limitations of his study in that he isn't poor, and can therefore only observe the condition, but regardless of that limitation, he'll ride as close to the knife edge of poverty's existence as he can stand. The scope is worldwide, and not some diatribe written by a bleeding heart with a knack for organizing statistics. V...more

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Aug 15, 2009 Pippypippy Madden rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very matter-of-fact, not sentimental at all, but certainly kind. Vollmann is humble and plain-spoken. He reveals much of his process of exploring the questions of who are poor people, what makes some people poor and others rich.
In the end, it made me know that I am, in fact, a rich person, and that I am probably a better human being for having read this book.

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45639.Poor_People?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170294786l/45639.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45639.Poor_People?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Poor People by William T. Vollmann[/url]

Poor People

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