One of our most incisive and committed journalists—author of the classic All the Livelong Day—shows us the real human cost of our economic follies.The Great Recession has thrown huge economic challenges at almost all Americans save the super-affluent few, and we are only now beginning to reckon up the human toll it is taking. Down the Up Escalator is an urgent dispatch from the front lines of our vast collective struggle to keep our heads above wa...

A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequali...

The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of EvictedMillions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone...

It’s not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player. That the United States of America is in danger of becoming a third world nation.The evidence is all around us:Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed the backbone of our economy for more than a century; our educati...

The rich have always been different from you and me, but this revealing and funny journey through “Richistan” entertainingly shows that they are more different than ever. Richistanis have 400-foot-yachts, 30,000-square-foot homes, house staffs of more than 100, and their own “arborists.” They’re also different from Old Money, and have torn down blue-blood institutions to build their own shining empire.Richistan is like the best travel writing, full of colorful and interesti...

The rich are not only getting richer, they are becoming more dangerous. Starting in the early 1980s the top one percent (1%) broke away from the rest of us to become the most unstable force in the economy. An elite that had once been the flat line on the American income charts - models of financial propriety - suddenly set off on a wild ride of economic binges.Not only do they control more than a third of the country’s wealth, their increasing vulnerability to the booms and busts o...

The Great Recession is not done with us yet. While the most acute part of the economic crisis is past, the recession's most significant impact on American life still lies in the future. The personal, social, and cultural changes that result from severe economic shocks build and manifest themselves only slowly. But history shows us that, ultimately, shocks this severe profoundly alter the character of society.Don Peck’s Pinched, a fascinating and harrowing exploration of ou...

**The inspiration for Chloé Zhao's celebrated film starring Frances McDormand, winner of the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best ActressA Selection of the PBS Newshour-New York Times "Now Read This" Book ClubNew York Times bestseller"People who thought the 2008 financial collapse was over a long time ago need to meet the people Jessica Bruder got to know in this scorching, beautifully written, vivid, disturbing (and occasionally ...

The author of Race for Profit carries out "[a] searching examination of the social, political and economic dimensions of the prevailing racial order" (Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow).In this winner of the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize for an Especially Notable Book, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor "not only exposes the canard of color-blindness but reveals how structural racism and class oppression are joined at the hip" (Robin D. G. Kelle...

The acclaimed New York Times series on social class in America—and its implications for the way we live our lives.We Americans have long thought of ourselves as unburdened by class distinctions. We have no hereditary aristocracy or landed gentry, and even the poorest among us feel that they can become rich through education, hard work, or sheer gumption. And yet social class remains a powerful force in American life.In Class Matters, a tea...

Unlock the more straightforward side of The Elegance of the Hedgehog with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!This engaging summary presents an analysis of The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, a thoughtful, witty look at the absurdity of human life. Through the unlikely friendship between a suicidal 12-year-old schoolgirl, an incredibly cultured 54-year-old concierge and a perceptive Japanese pensioner, The Elegance of ...

The story of Britain's great stately homes and the scandals, predominately sexual, which the owners and their families have been involved in from the sixteenth century to the present day. It details some of the most notorious scandals to have engulfed the British royal family and aristocracy and captures not only the events and their era, but also the essence of some of the world's greatest and most beautiful private dwellings.From the Hampton Court of Henry VIII to the modern scan...