From the publisher:

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, 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 crises. 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 is a phenomenal book. I think it goes a long way towards dispelling the myth that the problems of the poor are just individual problems. Rather they are a finely inter-connected set of problems, each affecting the other. Little can be done to help people in these situations if we don't find a systemic solution rather than a symptom-by-symptom method. It also puts a personal face on the problem, because these are very real people here, struggling with very real issues. These are real children suffering, not just statistics. I applaud Mr. Shipler for taking that step to show us our friends and neighbors, ourselves, as we truly are. Shipler does not attack conservatives or liberals for the problem, but rather finds a common goal that they both must move towards in order to help solve these problems once and for all. Two thoughts from the end of the book:

To appraise a society, examine its ability to be self-correcting. When grievous wrongs are done or endemic suffering exposed, when injustice is discovered or opportunity denied, watch the institutions of government and business and charity. Their response is an index of the nation's health and of a people's strength.

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.

*This book is headed for avanta7, as a surprise RABCK from her wishlist. Enjoy!

A selection from my wish list as a surprise from my dear friend fanclub. Thank you, dearie! You brightened my day!

RELEASE NOTES:

Nicked from Avanta for release, but actually I want to read it first.

I had a similar reaction to fanclub. This is a real eye-opener when it comes to the opportunities that are lost because poverty is a self-perpetuating cycle. I liked that the author picked all sorts of poverty--people who chose it, people who couldn't help it but wanted to, and people who were in it because of their errors. I think this should be required reading, actually...

I'm going to release it later today in Lodi, California.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

On the bookshelf. Private property not available to non-campers, sorry.