They wanted to document reality, not to advance any overarching thesis or political agenda. Their sole position on work was that it's a fascinating topic and an elemental part of nearly everyone's life. They were certainly not disappointed with what they found; this wide-ranging survey of the American economy at the turn of the millennium is stunning, surprising, and always entertaining. It gives us an unflinching view of the fabric of this country from the point of view of the people who keep it all moving.Recalling Studs Terkel's 1972 classic best-seller, Working, the more than 120 roughly textured monologues that make up Gig beautifully capture the voices of our fast-paced and diverse economy. The selections demonstrate how much our world has changed—and stayed the same—in the last three decades. If you think things have speeded up, become more complicated and more technological, you're right.But people's attitudes about their jobs, their hopes and goals and disappointments, endure. Gig's soul isn't sociological—it's emotional. The wholehearted diligence that people bring to their work is deeply, inexplicably moving. People speak in these pages of the constant and complex stresses nearly all of them confront on the job, but, nearly universally, they throw themselves without reservation into coping with them. Instead of resisting work, we seem to adapt to it. Some of us love our jobs, some of us don't, but almost all of us are not quite sure what we would do without one.With all the hallmarks of another classic on this subject, Gig is a fabulous read, filled with indelible voices from coast to coast. After hearing them, you'll never again feel quite the same about how we work.

    Richard Shelton first came to southeastern Arizona in the 1950s as a soldier stationed at Fort Huachuca. He soon fell in love with the region and upon his discharge found a job as a schoolteacher in nearby Bisbee. Now a university professor and respected poet living in Tucson, still in love with the Southwestern deserts, Shelton sets off for Bisbee on a not-uncommon day trip. Along the way, he reflects on the history of the area, on the beauty of the landscape, and on his own life. Couched within the narrative of his journey are passages revealing Shelton's deep familiarity with the region's natural and human history. Whether conveying the mystique of tarantulas or describing the mountain-studded topography, he brings a poet's eye to this seemingly desolate country. His observations on human habitation touch on Tombstone, "the town too tough to die," on ghost towns that perhaps weren't as tough, and on Bisbee itself, a once prosperous mining town now an outpost for the arts and a destination for tourists. What he finds there is both a broad view of his past and a glimpse of that city's possible future.Going Back to Bisbee explores a part of America with which many readers may not be familiar. A rich store of information embedded in splendid prose, it shows that there are more than miles on the road to Bisbee.

    No One Is Illegal debunks the leading ideas behind the often violent right-wing backlash against immigrants.Countering the chorus of anti-immigrant voices, Mike Davis and Justin Akers Chacón expose the racism of anti-immigration vigilantes and put a human face on the immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border to work in the United States.Davis and Akers Chacón challenge the racist politics of vigilante groups like the Minutemen, and argue for a pro-immigrant and pro-worker agenda that recognizes the urgent need for international solidarity and cross-border alliances in building a renewed labor movement.

    Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children.The first edition of Unequal Childhoods was an instant classic, portraying in riveting detail the unexpected ways in which social class influences parenting in white and African-American families. A decade later, Annette Lareau has revisited the same families and interviewed the original subjects to examine the impact of social class in the transition to adulthood.

    ‘We may live in an era of globalization,’ he writes, ‘but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movement of people.’ In Violent Borders, Jones travels the border regions of the world, documenting the billions of dollars spent on border security projects, and their dire consequences for the majority of the people in the world. While the poor are restricted by the lottery of birth to slums and the aftershocks of decolonization, the wealthy travel freely, exploiting pools of cheap labour and lax environmental regulations. With the growth of borders and resource enclosures, argues Jones, the deaths of migrants in search of a better life are intimately connected to climate change, the growth of slums, and the persistence of global wealth inequality.

    This anomalous ecology mutated into a femicide machine: an apparatus that didn't just create the conditions for the murders of dozens of women and little girls, but developed the institutions that guarantee impunity for those crimes and even legalize them. A lawless city sponsored by a State in crisis. The facts speak for themselves. -- from "The Femicide Machine"Best known to American readers for his cameo appearances as The Journalist in Roberto Bolano's "2666" and as a literary detective in Javier Marias's nove "l Dark Back of Time," Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez is one of Mexico's most important contemporary writers. He is the author of "Bones in the Desert," the most definitive work on the murders of women and girls in Juarez, Mexico, as well as "The Headless Man," a sharp meditation on the recurrent uses of symbolic violence; "Infectious," a novel; and "Original Evil, " a long essay. The "Femicide Machine" is the first book by Gonzalez Rodriguez to appear in English translation.Written especially for Semiotext(e) Intervention series, "The Femicide Machine" synthesizes Gonzalez Rodriguez's documentation of the Juarez crimes, his analysis of the unique urban conditions in which they take place, and a discussion of the terror techniques of narco-warfare that have spread to both sides of the border. The result is a gripping polemic. " The Femicide Machine" probes the anarchic confluence of global capital with corrupt national politics and displaced, transient labor, and introduces the work of one of Mexico's most eminent writers to American readers.

    history, Judith Adler Hellman, a leading authority on Mexican politics, went into the homes and workplaces of a variety of Mexicans, from rich industrialists to poor street vendors. In bringing us their stories, Hellman puts a human face on the political and economic transformation currently under way in this rapidly changing country, and puts in context the rage and frustration that is feeding the current rebellion in the Mexican state of Chiapas.The Mexicans interviewed in this remarkable book share their views on an array of subjects, including pollution, the political elite, corruption, economics, and the migrant experience in the United States. Some seek collective solutions to the challenges they face; others, for a variety of interesting reasons, have no involvement with any group beyond their immediate or extended family, and rely for their well-being only on themselves and their kin.Here we meet a small subsistence farmer, eager to break into the more profitable gourmet fruit and vegetable export market; a very wealthy family pondering how best to position its company to profit from NAFTA; and a former housewife turned union organizer, who must figure out what to do with her life savings: underwrite her son’s migration to the United States, put down a payment on a new house with running water, or buy an industrial sewing machine with which to start her own business.These personal portraits, combined with Hellman’s concise and engaging presentation of recent Mexican economic and political history, make this essential reading for those concerned about Mexico and the growing global economy.

    The Second is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti-gun” book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans.From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless—revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished.Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person exercises this right, the second they pick up a gun to protect themselves (or the second that they don't), their life—as surely as Philando Castile's, Tamir Rice's, Alton Sterling's--may be snatched away in that single, fatal second. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of today, Anderson's penetrating investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, shedding shocking new light on another dimension of racism in America.

    They famously shuttle coffee in a thousand newsrooms, MPs’ offices, and film sets, but they also deliver aid in Afghanistan, design high-end fashions, and build the human genome. They are of all ages, and their numbers are growing fast in an increasingly bleak economic landscape for young people. A huge and increasing number of internships are illegal under minimum wage law and this mass exploitation saves companies millions each year. Interns enjoy no workplace protections and no standing in courts of law—let alone luxuries such as a living wage.Ross Perlin, a self-confessed intern survivor, has written the first exposé of the brave new world of unpaid work. In this witty, astonishing, and serious investigative work, Perlin takes the reader inside both boutique nonprofits and megacorporations such as Disney. He unmasks a grotesque internship industry where coveted, unpaid placements are auctioned off and universities are complicit in exploiting student labour. He profiles fellow interns, talks to historians about what unleashed this phenomenon, and explains why the intern boom is perverting workplace practices in locations all around the world.Thought-provoking, insightful, and humorous, Intern Nation is an urgent call to overturn the latest racket in unpaid work.

    In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6-$7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity--a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

    What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths. Recently released individuals are faced with jobs that are off-limits, apartments that cannot be occupied and votes that cannot be cast.As The Color of Law exposed about our understanding of housing segregation, Halfway Home shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate. Parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they've paid their debt to society.Informed by Miller's experience as the son and brother of incarcerated men, captures the stories of the men, women, and communities fighting against a system that is designed for them to fail. It is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that reveals how laws, rules, and regulations extract a tangible cost not only from those working to rebuild their lives, but also our democracy. As Miller searchingly explores, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens.PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction FinalistWinner of the 2022 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences2022 PROSE Awards Finalist2022 PROSE Awards Category Winner for Cultural Anthropology and SociologyAn NPR Selected 2021 Books We LoveAs heard on NPR’s Fresh Air

    In 1845, seven years after escaping to the North, he published Narrative, the first of three autobiographies. This book calmly but dramatically recounts the horrors and the accomplishments of his early years—the daily, casual brutality of the white masters; his painful efforts to educate himself; his decision to find freedom or die; and his harrowing but successful escape.An astonishing orator and a skillful writer, Douglass became a newspaper editor, a political activist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the civil rights of African Americans. He lived through the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the beginning of segregation. He was celebrated internationally as the leading black intellectual of his day, and his story still resonates in ours.

    In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year--and they're still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today's America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.

    In little more than a year he has climbed from $10 a day car washer to $5000 a week headlinerdoing what some said he shouldn't do, most said he couldn't do, but what Gregory knows he must do -- tell the truth about segregation so that it brings smiles instead of hurt, and insight, even to the insensitive. His method: "Once I get them laughing, I can say anything."

    In this riveting account, editor Gary E. Moulton blends the narrative highlights of the Lewis and Clark journals so that the voices of the enlisted men and of Native peoples are heard alongside the words of the captains. All their triumphs and terrors are here—the thrill of seeing the vast herds of bison on the plains; the tensions and admiration in the first meetings with Indian peoples; Lewis's rapture at the stunning beauty of the Great Falls; the fear the captains felt when a devastating illness befell their Shoshone interpreter, Sacagawea; the ordeal of crossing the Continental Divide; the kidnapping and rescuing of Lewis’s dog, Seaman; miserable days of cold and hunger; and Clark's joy at seeing the Pacific. The cultural differences between the corps and Native Americans make for living drama that at times provokes laughter but more often is poignant and, at least once, tragic.