Urban 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...

In the United States today, one in every 31 adults is under some form of penal control, including one in 11 African American men. How did the "land of the free" become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration's War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society at the height of the civil rights era.

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s.

In a moving example of unconditional love in dif­ficult times, Gregory Boyle, the Jesuit priest and New York Times bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart, shares what working with gang members in Los Angeles has taught him about faith, compassion, and the enduring power of kinship. In his...

Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. This audiobook is about them, the so-called mole people, living alone and in communities, in subway tunnels, and below subway platforms. It is about how and why people move underground, who they are, and what they have to say about their lives and the "topside" world they've left behind.

As a child you see the world through innocent eyes. You enjoy your childhood because you’re not aware of the dangers the world around you hold. The drunk man sitting by the side of the road is just a drunk man, he’s not an alcoholic who’s wasted his life because you don’t know what an alcoholic is. The men who knock on the door all the time to see your mum are just her friends who like to give her money. There’s nothing wrong with that. As time passes that innocence is stripped away, for some it happens quicker than others. Forced to grow up in a world where the actions of your ...

Respect My Gangsta Part 1 Life of Sorrow spotlights Sorrow Sanae' Hunter (aka Panther) and her entanglement with unrelenting hardship and death. Born of infidelity, Sorrow endures torment and neglect, aided only by her brothers. When their Mother's drug addiction catalyzes them into murderers, Sorrow learns hustling and self-preservation from them. Her first love brings brief respite, but she hones the art of gaining Respect for her Gangsta. A tragedy crushes her first love, and her mom restricts her autonomy. To flee her cruel world, Sorrow enrolls in college and abandons the street life. ...

In Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country.

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.

From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neoliberal theory. Are the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, volcanoes waiting to erupt?

For those who’ve seen the bottom—and those brave enough to look. Dark is the Night is a disturbing portrait of low-life existence—raw, unflinching, and unforgettable. Written partly in the language and mores of its time, author Luis Blasini rises above mere reflection to deliver something deeper: a brutal, at times darkly hilarious, excavation of the human soul at its most broken. There’s little hope or love here. What you’ll find instead are junkies, hustlers, prostitutes, perverts, and thieves scraping through back alleys and burned-out rooms—etched in hard-boiled prose and ...

Beyond the Block - Amazon KDP Description When dreams are the only way out, how far would you go to escape the trap of poverty? Eighteen-year-old Keyara Mayfield has always been the responsible one—working part-time jobs, helping with bills, and watching over her younger brother Malik while their parents struggle to make ends meet. Living in the projects of a forgotten neighborhood, the Mayfield family faces the same crushing cycle that has claimed so many others: low-paying jobs, mounting bills, and a future that seems predetermined by their zip code. But when Keyara discovers the Bridge...

The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban Blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. David Ansell has spent nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, and has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In

The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients.

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation’s diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a Black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.

"Blacks are 13% but commit half of the crime!" Using statistics, facts, charts, arguments never heard before, and common sense, this book factually challenges many firmly held beliefs, such as “Blacks make up 13% of the population but commit half of the violent crimes.” Offering a comprehensive examination of street crime in America's inner cities, it navigates diverse topics with clarity. Drawing from various disciplines, the author explores how mental illness, systemic racism, black apathy, drugs, family breakdown, American values, and the financial gains from illicit activities fuel ...

The children we meet through the deepening friendships that evolve between Janathan Kozol and their families defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented on TV and in newspapers. Tender, generous, and often religiously devout, they speak with painful clarity about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. "It's not like being in a jail," says 15-year-old Isabel. "It's more like being hidden."

Lady is forced to grow up fast when she and her siblings are abandoned by their drug-addicted mother. Raised by their grandparents, they were taught the values of life and responsibility in Newark, NJ.Her first love, Jungle, introduced her to the streets, love, and every part of the game until his untimely disappearance. Boogie, Reek, and Blackjack look out for Lady as she is forced to survive the escalating violence around her. With the streets saying that Blackjack and his brother Ripper had set Jungle up, Boogie and Reek put together a murderous plot to get revenge. As the bodies stack ...

In closely reported stories from the streets of New York to the seats of intellectual power, MacDonald shows how bad ideas get started and then acquire a life of their own. Her reports trace the transformation of influential opinion-makers and large philanthropic foundations from confident advocates of individual responsibility, opportunity, and learning into apologists for the welfare state.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to How the Other Half Lives and learn about the conditions of abject poverty that the residents of the slums of New York at the end of the 19th century had to endure.

"The People of the Abyss" (1903) is a work by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account after living in the East End (including the Whitechapel District) for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about, were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.