We often think of poverty and inequality as specific to people. This book flips that notion on its head. Poverty comes from locations that repeatedly suffer from disadvantage. it traces this history through narratives of people who live and have lived in these locations. It is a great read for people seeking to understand why poverty and inequality are such difficult problems to overcome.
A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.
“This book forces you to see American poverty in a whole new light.” (Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America and Evicted)
Three of the nation’s top scholars – known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice.…
I challenge you to read the opening pages of the preface of this book - you won't be able to put it down. Covering a variety of perspectives on gun violence, from victims to perpetrators to activists and beyond, this book offers a fascinating account of the subject. Bates doesn't 't preach, he simply gets to the point of a complicated subject.
A groundbreaking expose on the rise of gun violence in recent years.
Journalist Josiah Bates pulls back the curtain on a crisis that continues to plague the United States in this gripping narrative. Fueled by the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest, gun violence has surged to unprecedented levels, devastating marginalized communities and urban areas across the nation.
Bates embarks on a heart-wrenching journey, crisscrossing the country to meet victims, perpetrators, community activists, and renowned scholars. Through their powerful stories, he unearths the hidden causes behind the escalating gun violence epidemic. From the corrosive effects of poverty to…
United States society constantly debates the role of our social safety net (or the lack of one) every political season. Holding It Together documents how women are forced to pick up the slack where we fall short in everything from childcare to elder care to baking brownies for a school bake sale. Poignantly told through the stories of women interviewed for the book, your views on the United States system of care and women's roles within it, will be changed by reading this book.
Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. Holding It Together chronicles the causes and dire consequences.
America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this tour de force, acclaimed Sociologist Jessica Calarco lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo.
Holding It Together draws on five years of research in which Calarco surveyed over 4000 parents and conducted more than 400 hours of interviews with women who bear the brunt of our broken system. A widowed single mother struggles to patch together…
How can we make society more resilient to outbreaks and avoid forcing the poor and working class to bear the brunt of their harm?
When an epidemic outbreak occurs, the most physical and financial harm historically falls upon the people who can least afford it: the economically and socially marginalized. Where people live and work, how they commute and socialize, and more have a huge impact on the risks we bear during an outbreak. In The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus, economist Troy Tassier examines examples ranging from the 430 BCE plague of Athens to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate why marginalized groups bear the largest burden of epidemic costs—and how to avoid these systemic failures in the future.
The links between epidemics and social issues—such as inequality, discrimination, and financial insecurity—are not always direct or clear. Tassier reveals truths hidden in plain sight, from the way population density statistics can be misleading to the often-misunderstood differences between risk and uncertainty. The disproportionate harm experienced by marginalized individuals is not the product of their own decisions; instead, the collective choices of society and the tangled web of interactions across people and communities leave these groups most exposed to the perils of epidemics.
However, there is reason to hope. Utilizing a wealth of economic and population data, Tassier argues that we can leverage lessons learned from historic and recent outbreaks to design better economic and social policies and more just institutions to protect everyone in society when inevitable future epidemics arrive.
