Nonfiction Poverty

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The New...

What if the real question isn't “Why are people poor?” but “Why do we still pretend it’s that simple?” In To Be Rich or Poor: Is It a Choice? Felix Edison delivers a courageous, thought-provoking journey into the truth behind economic disparity. With insight, empathy, and piercing honesty, this book explores the hidden forces that shape our financial outcomes: mindset, trauma, systems, privilege, resilience, and access. Through thirty powerful chapters, Edison dismantles harmful myths and reveals how poverty and wealth are never the result of a single choice, but rather the ...

The New York Times bestselling true story of an all-American girl and a boy from Zimbabwe and the letter that changed both of their lives forever. It started as an assignment. Everyone in Caitlin's class wrote to an unknown student somewhere in a distant place. Martin was lucky to even receive a...

A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day in the school lunch line, Rex's is a compelling story of a more profound hunger - that of a child for his parents' love and care.

From New York Times best-selling authors Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski comes the young listeners' edition of an unbelievable memoir about an unlikely friendship that forever changed the lives of a busy sales executive and a hungry 11-year-old boy. On one rainy afternoon, on a crowded New York City street corner, eleven-year-old Maurice met Laura. Maurice asked Laura for spare change because he was hungry, and something made Laura stop and ask Maurice if she could take him to lunch.

Piven and Cloward have updated their classic work on the history and function of welfare to cover the American welfare state's massive erosion during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. The authors present a boldly comprehensive, brilliant new theory to explain the comparative underdevelopment of the US welfare state among advanced industrial nations. Their conceptual framework promises to shape the debate within current and future administrations as they attempt to rethink the welfare system and its role in American society.

A gentle introduction to the issue of poverty, On Our Street explores the realities of people living with inadequate resources. Using age-appropriate language, this book addresses mental illness, homelessness and refugee status as they are connected to this issue. Insightful quotes from individuals and organizations such as UNICEF are included throughout to add further perspective on the issue. An invaluable section on how kids can help empowers readers to take what they have learned and use it to make a difference.

A deeply personal nine-year account of the lives of the “anchor-outs”—an unhoused community living off the California coast on abandoned boats—that explores the struggles and resilience of those surviving on the fringes of society. In the wake of the financial crisis, the number of...

Paul Polak, whose organization International Development Enterprises (IDE) has directly helped over 17 million people get out of poverty permanently, exposes the top 3 things we are doing wrong in our efforts to end the root causes of poverty. He then, through the story of a Nepali farmer, goes on to detail solutions for what actually works when it comes to ending poverty.

An unforgettable account of a quietly remarkable life, Robert Brown's memoir takes readers behind the scenes of pivotal moments from the 20th century, where the lessons he learned at his grandmother's knee helped him shape America as we know it today. Called "a world-class power broker" by...

"De Ocampo's performance is admirable. It is well paced, and he employs voices and strategic pauses to good effect. In sum, both the writing and narration are first-class." - AudioFile Magazine An eye-opening investigation of America’s rural and suburban housing crisis, told through a searing...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR An award-winning journalist’s powerful portrait of his native Baghdad, the people of Iraq, and twenty years of war. “An essential insider account of the unravelling of Iraq…Driven by his intimate knowledge and deep personal stakes...

London, 1857: Two teenage girls holding a sign that says "Fugitive Slaves" ask for money on the corner of Blackman Street. After a constable accosts them and charges them with begging, they end up in court, where newspapers pick up their story. Are the girls truly escaped slaves from Kentucky? Or will the city's dystopian Mendicity Society catch them in a lie, exposing them as born-and-raised Londoners and endangering their safety? With its many accounts of people like these who lived and made their living on the streets, Vagabonds forms a moving picture of London's most compelling period.

For a quarter century in more than ninety countries, Habitat for Humanity has built homes with and for the people who are most in need of them, aided by more than a million volunteers - two of the most devoted of whom are former president Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

It doesn’t take a long list of statistics to convince you that our world is broken. Mission trips, service projects, and supporting children through relief organizations are just a few of the ways that many youth workers engage their students in serving the least, the last, and the lost. As...

In this Very Short Introduction, Philip N. Jefferson explores how the answers to these questions lie in the social, political, economic, educational, and technological processes that impact all of us throughout our lives. The degree of vulnerability is all that differentiates us. He shows how a person's level of vulnerability to adverse changes in their life is very much dependent on the circumstances of their birth, including where their family lived, whether it was peacetime or wartime, whether they had access to clean water, and whether they are male or female.

Bess Cunningham has never been popular, and she plans to do something about it. She's got a fresh style, with plenty of unique clothes, and she's the new stage manager for the musical at her middle school. She couldn't care less about the volunteer work her parents do at a soup kitchen until she meets Grace Jarvis Battle. The kind, elderly woman reminds Bess of her grandmothers except for one significant difference - Grace lives on the street and finds food in dumpsters.

When Lydia was five years old, she and her family had to leave their home. They hopped from Grandma's house to Aunt Linda's house to Cousin Alice's house, but no place was permanent. Then one day, everything changed: Lydia's mom took her to a new place - not a house but a big building with stone columns and tall tall steps. The library. In the library, Lydia found her special spot across from the sunny window at a round desk. For behind that desk was her new friend, the librarian.

As a young boy, Bao and his father awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. A successful catch meant a fed family. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.

What Is Money? opens up discussion for children on issues of financial responsibility, both practical and ethical. Encouraging children to learn about and understand the true value of one of man's most intriguing inventions, What Is Money? is a way to examine the history of money, as well as the realistic applications and moral questions associated with its use.