working class

Presents the narratives of two slaves, Wallace Turnage and John Washington, who escaped to freedom during the chaos of the Civil War.

A young Lithuanian immigrant arrives in America filled with dreams of wealth, freedom, and opportunity, but soon learns the truth of the workingman's lot at the turn of the century.

The orphaned Pip is serving as a blacksmith's apprentice when an unknown benefactor supplies the means for him to be educated in London as a gentleman of "great expectations.".

Explores the effects of mass media on working-class culture in England during the early decades of the twentieth century.

A memoir chronicling the author's upbringing in a Philadelphia housing project in the 1960s, covering his father's erratic and emotional behavior and his own flight from the confines of his youth to follow his dreams and better his circumstances.

Contains nine darkly comic stories of working-class men in 1950s Nottingham.

"Hugh "Shuggie" Bain spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Hismother Agnes is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for hissiblings. Dreaming of a house with its own front door and ordering happiness on credit as her husband philanders, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good but finds solace in drink. As she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety, Agnes's addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close toher-- especially her beloved Shuggie"--Adapted from dust jacket.

"A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town's economic, moral, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname 'Cancer Valley.' In Mill Town, Arsenault undertakes an excavation of a collective past, sifting through historical archives and scientific reports, talking to family and neighbors, and examining her own childhood to present a portrait of a community that illuminates not only the ruin of her hometown and the collapse of the working-class of America, but also the hazards of both living in and leaving home, and the silences we are all afraid to violate. In exquisite prose, Arsenault explores the corruption of bodies: the human body, bodies of water, and governmental bodies, and what it's like to come from a place you love but doesn't always love you back"--Provided by the publisher.