English Poverty

Anti-Social is the diary of a council worker whose job is to keep his community happy, or at least away from each other’s throats. That’s hard enough at the best of times but when government cuts mean that hospitals, social services and police are all at breaking point, the possibility of complete chaos is never far away. This is an urgent, timely but, most of all, hysterically funny true story of a life spent working with the people society wants to forget and the problems that nobody else can resolve.

Now that Franny and her newly sober mom have moved to a cozy apartment above a laundromat, Franny’s looking forward to a life where her biggest excitement is getting top grades in math class. But when Franny’s mom gets injured in a car accident, their fragile life begins to crumble. There’s no way her mom can keep her job cleaning houses, which means she can’t pay the bills. Franny can’t forget what happened the last time her mom was hurt: the pills that were supposed to help became an addiction, until rehab brought them to Mimi’s laundromat and the support group she hosts.

The world food system is in crisis. Right now, just over one billion people in the world live in extreme poverty. Food shortages are not limited to third world countries and crops. Maybe genetic modification of food might solve the problem. Some people think this is the be-all and the end-all and cite this as a perfect solution for food shortages. This book takes a look at the economic crisis with special attention to the world food system.

Jeremiah feels good inside his own skin. That is, when he's in his own Brooklyn neighborhood. But now he's going to be attending a fancy prep school in Manhattan, and black teenage boys don't exactly fit in there. So it's a surprise when he meets Ellie the first week of school. In one frozen moment their eyes lock, and after that they know they fit together - even though she's Jewish and he's black.

Finally, Amira is 12. Old enough to wear a toob, old enough for new responsibilities. And maybe old enough to go to school in Nyala - Amira's one true dream. But life in her peaceful Sudanese village is shattered when the Janjaweed arrive. The terrifying attackers ravage the town and unleash unspeakable horrors. After she loses nearly everything, Amira needs to dig deep within herself to find the strength to make the long journey - on foot - to safety at a refugee camp.

Food is a conduit for connection; we envision smiling families gathered around a table-eating, happy, content. But what happens when poverty, mental illness, homelessness, and addiction claim a seat at that table? In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal the complex reality when poverty and food intersect.

The whole world has a stake in the war against poverty and leaders across the globe are looking for a permanent solution. That's why economist Barry Asmus and theologian Wayne Grudem have teamed up to outline a robust proposal for fighting poverty on a national level. These two experts believe the solution lies in a comprehensive development plan that integrates the principles of a free market system with the Bible's teachings on social ethics.

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.

In her powerful memoir His Bright Light, number-one New York Times best-selling author Danielle Steel opened her heart to share the devastating story of the loss of her beloved son. In A Gift of Hope, she shows us how she transformed that pain into a campaign of service that enriched her life beyond what she could imagine. For 11 years, Danielle Steel took to the streets with a small team to help the homeless of San Francisco. She worked anonymously, visiting the "cribs" of the city's most vulnerable citizens under cover of darkness, distributing food, clothing, bedding, tools, and toiletries.

Each of us has a finite amount of mental bandwidth, the cognitive resources that are available for learning, development, work, and everything else we have to do. These "attentional resources" are not about how smart we are, but about how much of our brain power is available to us for the task at hand.

As one of the nation’s leading anti-poverty organizers and moral voices, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis explores the largely untold history of poor people’s movements in the United States and traces her own journey through some of the most significant anti-poverty struggles of the past thirty years. In this book, Theoharis introduces us to the people leading the movement to end poverty.

The sometimes fragmentary tales of these people, their lives and deaths, are not included in official histories of a place. How, Ensign asks, has a large, socially progressive city like Seattle responded to the health needs of people marginalized by poverty, mental illness, addiction, racial/ethnic/sexual identities, and homelessness? Drawing on interviews and extensive research, Ensign shares a diversity of voices within contemporary health care and public policy debates.

With 750 million people living in villages, India has the largest rural population in the world. Based on his Indian experience, Dr Kalam recommends a sustainable and inclusive development system called PURA - Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas - to uplift the rural masses not by subsidies but through entrepreneurship with community participation. Dr Kalam cites the examples of individuals and institutions, in India and from across the world, who, with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to make a difference, have successfully tapped into the potential of the rural masses.

In one of the poorest parts of rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back country roads, never to be seen alive again. For 17-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with in her own home, every day. Marjorie has been raised by parents so intentionally isolated from normal society that they have developed their own dialect, a kind of mountain hybrid of English that displays both their ignorance of and disdain for the wider world.

Named after Mahatma Gandhi's phrase for the schools of pre-colonial India, The Beautiful Tree recounts Tooley's journey from the largest shanty town in Africa to the hinterlands of Gansu, China. It introduces listeners to the families and teachers who taught him that the poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and educating themselves.

When her best guy friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, 16-year-old Cat sets out to discover who in her small town did it. Richly atmospheric, this daring mystery mines the secrets of a tightly knit Southern community and examines the strength of will it takes to go against everyone you know in the name of justice.

Shannon, Wally, and John built their lives around their place of work. Shannon, a white single mother, became the first woman to run the dangerous furnaces at the Rexnord manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was proud of producing one of the world’s top brands of steel bearings. Wally, a black man known for his initiative and kindness, was promoted to chairman of efficiency, one of the most coveted posts on the factory floor, and dreamed of starting his own barbecue business one day.

Has teaching ever felt more stressful? External pressures, environmental factors, previous experiences, fear, anger—all these and more create stress and tension in the classroom. Emotional distress interrupts and can harm—even destroy—effective teaching, learning, and emotional wellness in teachers and students.

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible proclaims justice and abundance for the poor. Yet these powerful passages about poverty are frequently overlooked and misinterpreted. Enter the Poor People's Campaign, a movement against racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and religious nationalism. In We Cry Justice, Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the campaign, is joined by pastors, community organizers, scholars, low-wage workers, lay leaders, and people in poverty to interpret sacred stories about the poor seeking healing, equity, and freedom.

For more than 30 years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet while the Green Revolution succeeded in South America and Asia, it never got to Africa. More than 9 million people every year die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every yearmost of them in Africa and most of them children. More die of hunger in Africa than from AIDS and malaria combined. Now, an impending global food crisis threatens to make things worse.