In this edited collection of narrative-based, critically situated essays, each contributor explores how class has affected his/her personal and academic lives. The collection is divided into three sections: i) narratives that critique the meritocracy; ii) narratives that trace the effects of middle class cultural capital on relatively new academics from the working class, and; iii) narratives that explore the effects of class on longtime academics from the working class. The effect of the ...

Part of our collection of Young Adult Classics, a Victorian coming-of-age story.I had been seasoned by adversity, and tutored by experience, and I longed to redeem my lost honour in the eyes of those whose opinion was more than that of all the world to me.Agnes Grey is forced to become a governess due to her family's circumstances, but struggles with the reality of disobedient children, disdainful employers and an isolated existence. Written fro...

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American su...

A 2012 New York Times Book Review Editor's ChoiceAn intimate portrait of an invisible man—a powerful story of one man’s life that contains multitudes.Like Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun and Alexander Masters’s Stuart, this is a tour de force of narrative reportage.Mohammed Ashraf studied biology, became a butcher, a tailor, and an electrician’s apprentice; now he is a homeless day laborer in the heart of old Delhi. How did he end up this way? In an...

Lou Dobbs's bestselling exposé of the silent assault on the living standards of ordinary AmericansMillions of TV viewers have known Lou Dobbs for years as the Walter Cronkite of economics coverage, and now the anchor has become the preeminent champion of the common man and the good of the national interest, who tells uncomfortable truths in a voice that can't be ignored. In this incendiary book, he presents a frontline report on the betrayal of America's middle cla...

Natural disasters don't matter for the reasons we think they do. They generally don't kill a huge number of people. Most years more people kill themselves than are killed by Nature's tantrums. And using standard measures like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) it is difficult to show that disasters significantly interrupt the economy.It's what happens after the disasters that really matters-when the media has lost interest and the last volunteer has handed out a final blanket, and people ...

Extraordinary true stories of the Irish in America, their remarkable rise from urban poverty, and the powerful dynasties they engenderedAuthor Stephen Birmingham, who chronicled the rise of Jewish immigrants to extraordinary wealth and success in "Our Crowd", now turns his attention to the Irish. Real Lace tells the colorful and fascinating true stories of America's most renowned Irish-Catholic families. Scions of courageous, driven, and resilient ...

Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) was an English novelist known for her huge output, now mostly out of print. Charlotte Mary Yonge's books provide an intimate picture of English aristocracy in the turn of the 20th century. There is a slight similarity to Jane Austin's novels due to both authoresses writing about the same level of society during the same period. However, Ms. Yonge's deep religious beliefs constitute much of her characterization and tone.

How do individuals and organizations move beyond the boundaries of constitutional or legal constructs to challenge neoliberalism and capitalism? As major urban areas have become the principal sites of poor and working-class social upheaval in the early twenty-first century, the chapters in this book explore key cities in the Global South. Through detailed cases studies, Urban Revolt unravels the potential and limitations of urban social movements on an international level.

Focusing on deep conflicts between the medical establishment and the working class, Martha Balshem chronicles a health education project in “Tannerstown,” a pseudonym for a blue-collar neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia.

One of the most extensive studies of class in nineteenth-century African American literature to date, Dividing Lines unveils how black fiction writers represented the uneasy relationship between class differences, racial solidarity, and the quest for civil rights in black communities. By portraying complex, highly stratified communities with a growing black middle class, these authors dispelled notions that black Americans were uniformly poor or uncivilized. The book argues that t...

Social Problems and Inequality explores integrated and root-cause-based explanations of complex social problems. Written in clear and understandable language, allowing it to be used for classroom purposes, it addresses the most fundamental principles of how humans, acting through social units, create, and eventually can remedy, social problems. With a central focus on the problem of inequality and the manner in which this is manifested in crime, social class and stratification, this book e...