The Working Poor
by David K. Shipler "Nobody who works hard should be poor in America," writes Pulitzer Prize
winner David Shipler. Clear-headed, rigorous, and compassionate, he journeys
deeply into the lives of individual store clerks and factory workers, farm
laborers and sweat-shop seamstresses, illegal immigrants in menial jobs and
Americans saddled with immense student loans and paltry wages. They are known
as the working poor.
They perform labor essential to America's comfort. They are white and black,
Latino and Asian--men and women in small towns and city slums trapped near the
poverty line, where the margins are so tight that even minor setbacks can cause
devastating chain reactions. Shipler shows how liberals and conservatives are
both partly right–that practically every life story contains failure by both the
society and the individual. Braced by hard fact and personal testimony, he
unravels the forces that confine people in the quagmire of low wages. And unlike
most works on poverty, this book also offers compelling portraits of employers
struggling against razor-thin profits and competition from abroad. With pointed
recommendations for change that challenge Republicans and Democrats alike, The
Working Poor stands to make a difference.
David K. Shipler
David K. Shipler reported for The New York Times from
1966 to 1988 in New York, Saigon, Moscow, Jerusalem, and Washington,
D.C. He is the author of four other books, including the best sellers
Russia and The Working Poor, and Arab and Jew, which won the Pulitzer
Prize. Shipler, who has been a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution
and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
has taught at Princeton University; at American University in Washington,
D.C.; and at Dartmouth College. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.