social science / social classes

"The story of low-wage workers rising up around the world to demand respect and a living wage. We Are All Fast Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages traces the evolution of a new global labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from Manila to Manhattan, from Baja California to Bangladesh, from Capetown to Cambodia. This is an up close and personal look at globalization and its costs, as seen through the eyes and told whenever possible through the words of low-wage workers themselves: the berry pickers and small farmers, fast food servers, retail cashiers, garment workers, hotel housekeepers, home health care aides, airport workers and adjunct professors who are fighting for respect, safety and a living wage. The result of 140 interviews by award-winning historian Annelise Orleck, and with original photographs by Liz Cooke, this is a powerful look at neo-liberalism and its damages, a story of resistance and rebellion, a reflection on hope and change as it rises from the bottom up"--.

A near-death experience turned a troubled underachiever into an accomplished English professor. The botched robbery didn't do it. Neither did the three gunshots. It wasn't until he flatlined twice and was administered last rites that David Borkowski finally realized he was about to die, a thug at age fifteen. Convinced the cops were shooting harmless "salt" bullets, David had darted through front lawns as the cops gave chase. It wasn't until much later, when David was bleeding to death, that the cops realized they had hit one of their own---the son of a fellow cop. Funny and poignant, but always honest and reflective, A Shot Story tracks David Borkowski's life before and after the "accident" and tells how his having been a rather unremarkable student early on may have been a blessing in disguise.

"Scholar and journalist Marc Lamont Hill presents [an] ... analysis of race and class by examining a growing crisis in America: the existence of a group of citizens who are made vulnerable, exploitable and disposable through the machinery of unregulated capitalism, public policy, and social practice [and] ... shows how this Nobody class has emerged over time and how forces in America have worked to preserve and exploit it in ways that are both humiliating and harmful"--.

We, in America, have certain ideas of what it means to be poor. Linda Tirado, in her signature brutally honest yet personable voice, takes all of these preconceived notions and smashes them to bits. She articulates not only what it is to be working poor in America (yes, you can be poor and live in a house and have a job, even two), but what poverty is truly like on all levels. In her thought-provoking voice, Tirado discusses how she went from lower-middle class, to sometimes middle class, to poor and everything in between, and in doing so reveals why "poor people don't always behave the way middle-class America thinks they should.

"Presents a search of Americans who love their guns"--Provided by publisher.