"From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon's CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming...

"During Sarah Smarsh's turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the country's changing economic policies solidified her family's place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to examine the class divide in our country and the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. Her personal history affirms the corrosive impact intergenerational poverty...

"The story of low-wage workers rising up around the world to demand respect and a living wage. We Are All Fast Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages traces the evolution of a new global labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from Manila to Manhattan, from Baja California to Bangladesh, from Capetown to Cambodia. This is an up close and personal look at globalization and its costs, as seen through the eyes and...

"From author Willy Vlautin comes an exploration of greed and opportunism, set amidst a rapidly gentrifying city -- a novel taking place over 48 hours in which a young woman must push herself to her limits to get the security she needs for herself and her family"--

"An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy. "Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again. Today I'm really gonna be a tough guy." Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different -- "girlish," intellectually precocious, and attracted to other...

"Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 28 out of 3,140 counties in America. The single worst place in the United States to look for affordable housing is Osceola County, Florida. Once the main approach to Disney World, where vacationers found lodging on their way to the Magic Kingdom, the fifteen-mile Route 192 corridor in Osceola has become a site of shocking contrasts. At one end, absentee investors snatch up foreclosed...

A carpenter recovering from a heart attack befriends a single mother and her two kids as together they battle the national health care and benefits system to receive Employment and Support Allowance.

A plea -- deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans -- to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Through the lives of real Americans, Kristof and WuDunn address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Rural Yamhill, Oregon, prospered for much of the twentieth century but has...

In this landmark living history series, a Victorian tenement in the heart of London's East End has been painstakingly brought back to life. Host Michael Mosley joins a group of 21st century families as they move in and experience the tough living and working conditions of the Victorian poor.

"When his father is framed for murder, immigrant Nikolaus McGovern rallies a motley crew of street youths in a rip-roaring coming-of-age adventure based on the period history of antebellum New York City! Against a backdrop of rampant political corruption, vicious street gangs, nascent labor reform, and ardent xenophobia, can Niko and his friends triumph in a life-or-death battle against their oppressors -- or will they succumb to the engines of socioeconomic...