$2.00 a Day

By Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer,

Book cover of $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

Book description

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
The story of a kind of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don't even think exists—from a leading national poverty expert who “defies convention.” (The New York Times)
Jessica Compton’s family of four would have no income…

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Why read it?

1 author picked $2.00 a Day as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

We can’t understand the present unless we understand the past, but the reverse is also true: I would not be a good historian of medieval poverty – including all the layers of infrastructure, production, famine, religious ideology, and public policy that define, ameliorate and exacerbate poverty – if I did not also pay attention to how these forces work in the present, and to the actual lives of the people who are so affected. This book paints some of the best portraits I’ve seen of people who were trying to make ends meet during the first two decades of the…

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