Health Inequalities

Pittsburgh was once synonymous with steel. But today, most of its mills are gone. Like so many places across the United States, a city that was a center of blue-collar manufacturing is now dominated by the service economy - particularly health care, which employs more Americans than any other industry. Gabriel Winant takes us inside the Rust Belt to show how America's cities have weathered new economic realities. In Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, he finds that a new working class has emerged in the wake of deindustrialization.

“Mine” is one of the first words babies learn, and by the time we grow up, the idea of ownership seems natural, whether we are buying a cup of coffee or a house. But who controls the space behind your airplane seat: you, reclining, or the squished laptop user behind you? Why is plagiarism wrong, but it’s okay to knock off a recipe or a dress design? And after a snowstorm, why does a chair in the street hold your parking space in Chicago, while in New York you lose both the space and the chair?

In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. These are places where people gather, making friends across group lines and strengthening the entire community. Klinenberg calls this the “social infrastructure”: When it is strong, neighborhoods flourish; when it is neglected, as it has been in recent years, families and individuals must fend for themselves.

Teeth takes listeners on a disturbing journey into America's silent epidemic of oral disease, exposing the hidden connections between tooth decay and stunted job prospects, low educational achievement, social mobility, and the troubling state of our public health.

Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor.

Inequality in America manifests in many ways, but perhaps nowhere more than in how we eat. From her years of field research, sociologist and ethnographer Priya Fielding-Singh brings us into the kitchens of dozens of families from varied educational, economic, and ethnoracial backgrounds to explore how - and why - we eat the way we do. We get to know four families intimately: the Bakers, a Black family living below the federal poverty line; the Williamses, a working-class white family just above it; the Ortegas, a middle-class Latinx family; and the Cains, an affluent white family.

Angus Deaton afirma que vivemos melhor hoje do que em qualquer outro período da história. As pessoas são mais saudáveis, mais ricas e a expectativa de vida continua aumentando. Paradoxalmente, o fato de tantos indivíduos terem conseguido escapar da pobreza também gerou desigualdades; e a disparidade entre países desenvolvidos e em desenvolvimento se estreitou, mas não desapareceu.

96 takes you on a breathtaking journey through Larry M. Brooks' early adolescence years hustling in the back woods of Liberty, Texas, to his adventures of adapting to middle class life as a military brat in Hinesville, Georgia. In this audiobook, Brooks puts on display his unique ability to turn real life experiences into parables that drive home his no-nonsense philosophical view points.

Todos los días vivimos y escuchamos historias de discriminación hacia el indefenso, la que destaca o, simplemente, los diferentes. HA LLEGADO EL MOMENTO DE TOMAR LA PALABRA: Hagamos del mundo, entre todos, un lugar mejor. Queremos creer que se trata de algo lejano, pero en realidad está más cerca de lo que creemos. Lo vemos en la calle, en la escuela. A veces, tristemente, en nuestros hogares. Todos los días escuchamos historias de odio y discriminación, historias que nos hacen pensar hacia dónde va el mundo. Es momento de cambiar.