"A . . . memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University"--Amazon.com.
"Shares the poignant story of the author's family and upbringing, describing how they moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan that included the author, a Yale Law School graduate, while navigating the demands of middle-class life and the collective demons of the past" (Destiny).
Winner Pulitzer Prize
Examines the fates of eight families struggling to pay their rent in the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, discussing the human cost of America's vast inequality.
The author, a Rhodes scholar and combat veteran, analyzes the various sociocultural factors that influenced him as well as another man of the same name and from the same neighborhood who was drawn into a life of drugs and crime and ended up serving life in prison, focusing on the influence of relatives, mentors, and social expectations that could have led either of them on different paths.
Author Barbara Ehrenreich relates her experiences from 1998 to 2000, during which time she joined the ranks of the working poor as a waitress, hotel housekeeper, cleaning woman, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart clerk to see for herself how America's "unskilled" workers are able to survive on only $6 or $7 an hour.
