Social Poverty

In this groundbreaking treatise, best-selling author and economist Ravi Batra identifies the roadblocks to world economic prosperity and what we need to do to overcome them. Batra takes on falling minimum wages, corporate scandals, rocketing oil prices, and many of the other crises facing the world economy. He offers an expansive, optimistic vision of how the international community can address them and bring about something historically unprecedented: true global economic prosperity.

Since the early days of the American republic, political thinkers have maintained that a grossly unequal division of property, wealth, and power would lead to the erosion of democratic life. Yet over the past thirty-five years, neoconservatives and neoliberals alike have redrawn the tenets of American liberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in our current mainstream political discourse, in which the politics of economic inequality are rarely discussed.

Javari knew that West Virginia would be different from his home in Bushwick, Brooklyn. But his first day at STEM Camp in a little Appalachian town is still a shock. Though run-ins with the police are just the same here. Not good.

For years, "Fisher King Mike" wandered the streets of LA, preaching to his people. On occasion, he'd share an open mic night with Michael Konik, who befriended the homeless man at a distance and offered a confused but sympathetic ear when the Fisher King lamented having to be so far away from his wife, Selena Gomez, and their several children. As the pair began to cautiously trust one another, confusion and distance gave way to friendship, and what came next astounded them both.

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.

From Streets to Solutions: Innovating Against Homelessness offers a comprehensive exploration of homelessness, dissecting its causes, the populations it affects, and the myriad of solutions that have been and can be employed to tackle it. Drawing on real-world case studies, expert interviews, and extensive research, the book weaves a narrative that is both informative and actionable.

Will has the wrong shoes – he's always known it but doesn't know how to change it. Navigating the difficulties of home and school when you feel you stick out is tough, but finding confidence with the help and empathy of friends can be all you need to see the way.

Tim Wise is one of America's most prolific public intellectuals. His critically acclaimed books, high-profile media interviews, and year-round speaking schedule have established him as an invaluable voice in any discussion on issues of race and multicultural democracy. In Under the Affluence, Wise discusses a related issue: economic inequality and the demonization of those in need.

The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.

In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories, and college aspirations for her children even as they sleep in motels and in her car.

In many ways, the story of the anchor-outs is the story of being poor in America. Examining profit-driven policies that exacerbate the contemporary housing crisis, Lost at Sea weaves together stories from within the anchorage alongside the rich history of the region, spanning from the Gold Rush era to the devastating fire of 1906. From a contemporary vantage point, it delves into the intense conflicts that arise between the anchor-outs and the affluent hillside communities which seek to dismantle the community for financial and recreational purposes.

The unforgettable inspiring memoir of one extraordinary doctor who is saving lives in a most unconventional way, Ask Me Why I Hurt is the touching and revealing first-person account of the remarkable work of Dr. Randy Christensen. Trained as a pediatrician, he works not in a typical hospital setting but, rather, in a 38-foot Winnebago that has been refitted as a doctor's office on wheels. His patients are the city's homeless adolescents and children.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dale Maharidge has spent his career documenting the downward spiral of the American working class, and his new book explores the limits of the American dream in the 2020s. Poverty is both reality and destiny for increasing numbers of people in the 2020s and, as Maharidge discovers spray-painted inside an abandoned gas station in the California desert, it is a fate often handed down from birth.

This book is about "the least among us", and the extraordinary power of grassroots leaders who are transforming the lives of forgotten men and women in the most toxic neighborhoods. The strategies they applied in healing the most desperate communities also hold the key to healing our divided and empty nation today. From the lessons he has learned from witnessing the work of committed neighborhood leaders, Robert Woodson has gleaned 10 fundamental principles.

As we recover through the reality of a global pandemic, we face into a severe cost of living crisis. We live in a time of great uncertainty. More people are being pushed into poverty. The gap between the richest and poorest is growing wider. We are, perhaps, more divided than we have ever been. Our public services are overwhelmed. Citizens are fed up.Our society is sick. What can we do? We must allow ourselves to feel the pain of our reality, be outraged, challenge the inevitability of the status quo and create moral alternative economies of a reimagined future.

At age 14, I ran away, but not from home - because I never had one to begin with. At school I participated in every sport, club, and after-school activity, so that when the other kids finally left, I could settle in for the night by my locker. I spent my childhood dealing with gangs, drugs, violence, and my mother's mental illness, but the real enemy was always poverty.

Nearly 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line - about $26,200 for a family of four. Low-income families and individuals are everywhere, from cities to rural communities. While poverty is commonly seen as a personal failure, or a deficiency of character or knowledge, it's actually the result of bad policy. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped - not because we lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to.

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.

En este libro pionero, Karlan y Appel conjugan la economía del comportamiento con la investigación de campo. Llevan a sus lectores consigo por pueblos de todo el mundo–desde Ghana hasta Kenia pasando por Sudáfrica, la India y Filipinas, Perú y México–en los que la teoría económica choca con la realidad. Muestran que ciertos cambios en la banca, los seguros, la asistencia sanitaria, la educación junto con otras iniciativas que tienen en cuenta la irracionalidad humana pueden mejorar radicalmente el bienestar de la gente pobre en todo el mundo.

Kevin Fagan’s The Lost and the Found, set in San Francisco—one of the wealthiest cities in America—takes an empathic, character-driven approach to exploring the human side of what’s behind the homelessness epidemic. An award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee who has covered homelessness for decades and spent extensive time on the streets for his reporting, Fagan experienced it himself as a young man and brings a deep understanding to the crisis.