Social Poverty

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.

When Rodney Mason, an ex-con drug dealer from Newark's rough South Ward, was shot and paralyzed, he vowed to turn his life around. A former high-school pitching ace with a 93-mph fastball, Mason decided to form a Little League team to help boys avoid the street life that had claimed his youth and mobility. Predictably, the players struggle but through the fists and tears, lopsided losses and rare victories, this bunch of misfits becomes a team, and in doing so gives the community something to root for.

Floss's parents are divorced, and she divides up her week, spending five days with her mum, her new step-dad and her baby half-brother. The other two days Floss spends with her dad, helping him to run his greasy spoon cafe. But their simple arrangement is thrown into disarray when Floss's mum decides to move to Australia. Making the difficult decision to stay at home, Floss moves in permanently with her dad and they muddle along happily together, surviving on chip butties and enjoying visits to the local funfair.

Jonathan Kozol's books have become touchstones of the American conscience. Unlike his previous books, however, Ordinary Resurrections is almost entirely narrative and takes us into the fascinating details of daily life as he has lived it with young children who befriended him over the course of several years. Like Amazing Grace, this book describes the children of New York's South Bronx, but it is a markedly different book in mood and vantage point.

Hearing impaired and way too smart for her West Bronx high school, Tamika Mik Sykes copes by reading lips and selling homework answers. She's a tough girl who never gets close to anyone, until she meets Fatima, a teenage refugee who sells newspapers on Mik's block.

Coming of Age in the Other America shows that despite overwhelming odds, some disadvantaged urban youth do achieve upward mobility. Drawing from 10 years of fieldwork with parents and children who resided in Baltimore public housing, sociologists Stefanie DeLuca, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin highlight the remarkable resiliency of some of the youth who hailed from the nation's poorest neighborhoods and show how the right public policies might help break the cycle of disadvantage.

Can money buy high-quality education? Studies find only a weak relationship between public school funding and educational outcomes. In The Money Myth, W. Norton Grubb proposes a powerful paradigm shift in the way we think about why some schools thrive and others fail. The greatest inequalities in America's schools lie in factors other than fiscal support. Fundamental differences in resources other than money explain the deepening divide in the success of our nation's schoolchildren.

In this powerful and culminating work about a group of inner-city children he has known for many years, Jonathan Kozol returns to the scene of his prize-winning books Rachel and Her Children and Amazing Grace, and to the children he has vividly portrayed, to share with us their fascinating journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood. For nearly 50 years Jonathan has pricked the conscience of his readers by laying bare the savage inequalities inflicted upon children for no reason but the accident of being born to poverty within a wealthy nation.

On a cold March day in 1893, 26-year-old nurse Lillian Wald rushed through the poverty-stricken streets of New York’s Lower East Side to a squalid bedroom where a young mother lay dying -abandoned by her doctor because she could not pay his fee. The misery in the room and the walk to reach it inspired Wald to establish Henry Street Settlement, which would become one of the most influential social welfare organizations in American history.

Tired of being poor, Steven’s father, Corey, is certain that preaching the Word of the Lord is the way to fame and fortune. So father and son take off in their dilapidated truck, with a stolen Bible and a leaky army tent, for a whirlwind tour of small Texas towns. At first, few people come to see the new tent preacher - but each day Corey’s confidence and charisma grow. Soon their fortune is growing, too, especially when they start performing bogus healings. For the first time, they can afford luxuries like expensive hotel rooms, meals in fancy restaurants, even a slick new bike for Steven.

Born into poverty in a crime-ridden town and unaware of his Ojibwe heritage, John Eric Aslin’s earliest memories are of a harrowing childhood rife with abuse. This troubling upbringing led him to an adolescence full of crime, when at 21 he was sentenced to life in prison for an accidental death. Thirty-six years later, he’s still behind bars, and almost a senior citizen. This heartbreaking account explores the life of John Aslin, painting a poignant and eye-opening picture of the struggles he faced during his upbringing, and the unfortunate hardships that led him to crime.

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.

True prosperity - thriving economically - is possible for all humanity, but common myths prevent us from achieving it. The primary barrier to prosperity is not in language, culture, religion, race, natural resources, or geography. The far greater obstacle is the systemic and individual corruption on the part of leaders who are free to steal without punishment.

One hundred percent of our homeless guests enjoy full medical coverage, shelter, food, and transportation within one week! Homeless neighbors come to us “in crisis” and quickly move along a path of self-sufficiency and a continuum of care in multiple areas (i.e., employment, housing, education, mental health, etc.) that build self-esteem and view each as an asset, not a liability. How did a small town (Ashland, Oregon) address its big problem? This audiobook tells you “how”.

Successful change requires all voices and voters at the table to be heard and valued. The Bridges Out of Poverty model is an antidote to current divisiveness, facilitates dialogue and respect among stakeholders, and offers policy-level direction for elected officials. The authors’ goal is to provide a road map for coming together as individuals, institutions, and communities to help people get out of poverty and create communities, states, and indeed a country where everyone can live well.

In Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn take a personal and harrowing look at the pervasive problems of poverty, drug abuse, and rising death rate in America through the stories of the people in America's forgotten towns. What they discover is a problem that goes far beyond unemployment or personal choice: they discover America's great social depression.

Michelle Clark has loved animals all her life, filling her home with a menagerie of stray cats and abandoned dogs. But when her outreach work with London's homeless community leads to a chance meeting with a desperate man, and a quest to find a missing Staffie named Poppy, she has no idea that her life will be transformed forever.

Dem globalen Mittelstand droht der Kollaps - es sei denn, die Gesellschaft lässt sich auf eine neue Richtung ein. Wird das aktuelle Wirtschaftssystem, das den Superreichen einen stetigen Einkommenszuwachs garantiert, nicht verbessert, wird es eine unüberbrückbare Kluft zwischen Arm und Reich geben. Der Unternehmer Huschmand Sabet fordert in diesem Werk eine führende Rolle der Weltreligionen als Instanzen der Wertevermittlung, sowie einen globalen Marshall-Plan, der das Konzept einer ökosozialen Marktwirtschaft einläuten soll.

Giselle Burgess was a young mother of five trying to provide for her family. Though she had a full-time job, the demands of ever-increasing rent and mounting bills forced her to fall behind, and eviction soon followed. Giselle and her kids were thrown into New York City's overburdened shelter system, which housed nearly 60,000 people each day. They soon found themselves living at a Sleep Inn in Queens, provided by the city as temporary shelter; for nearly a year, all six lived in a single room with two beds and one bathroom.

Her name is Odd. Twelve-year-old Audrey Wyatt bears the unfortunate nickname "Odd", a name even her bar-hopping, alcoholic mother uses when she's sober enough to recognize the girl. Cowed by life, Odd doesn't protest, not when she's deformed as she is. Born with a combination of rare birth defects, Odd's eyes are a startling and dreadful red. Demon eyes is the first thought that springs to mind. The little girl takes care to hide them behind dark sunglasses, something her mother insists on, except when she's trading freak-show peeks for dollars or drinks.