Poor

Toronto’s Poor reveals the long and too often forgotten history of poor people’s resistance. It details how people without housing, people living in poverty, and unemployed people have struggled to survive and secure food and shelter in the wake of the many panics, downturns, recessions, and depressions that punctuate the years from the 1830s to the present. Written by a historian of the working class and a poor people’s activist, this is a rebellious book that links past and present in an almost two-hundred year story of struggle and resistance. It is about men, women, and children relegated to lives of desperation by an uncaring system, and how they have refused to be defeated. In that refusal, and in winning better conditions for themselves, Toronto’s poor create the possibility of a new kind of society, one ordered not by acquisition and individual advance, but by appreciations of collective rights and responsibilities.

An NPR Favorite Book of the Year Winner of the Critics’ Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association Winner of the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award Winner of the CEP–Mildred García Award for Exemplary Scholarship “Eye-opening...Brings home the pain and reality of on-campus poverty and puts the blame squarely on elite institutions.” —Washington Post “Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion...His book challenges universities to support the diversity they indulge in advertising.” —New Yorker “The lesson is plain—simply admitting low-income students is just the start of a university’s obligations. Once they’re on campus, colleges must show them that they are full-fledged citizen.” —David Kirp, American Prospect “This book should be studied closely by anyone interested in improving diversity and inclusion in higher education and provides a moving call to action for us all.” —Raj Chetty, Harvard University The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.

Basis for the Major Motion Picture starring Emma Stone, Ramy Youssef, Mark Ruffalo, and Willem Dafoe, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. "Witty and delightfully written" (New York Times Book Review), Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things echoes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in this novel of a young woman freeing herself from the confines of the suffocating Victorian society she was created to serve. Winner of the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize In the 1880s in Glasgow, Scotland, medical student Archibald McCandless finds himself enchanted with the intriguing creature known as Bella Baxter. Supposedly the product of the fiendish scientist Godwin Baxter, Bella was resurrected for the sole purpose of fulfilling the whims of her benefactor. As his desire turns to obsession, Archibald’s motives to free Bella are revealed to be as selfish as Godwin’s, who claims her body and soul. But Bella has her own passions to pursue. Passions that take her to aristocratic casinos, low-life Alexandria, and a Parisian bordello, reaching an interrupted climax in a Scottish church. Exploring her station as a woman in the shadow of the patriarchy, Bella knows it is up to her to free herself—and to decide what meaning, if any, true love has in her life. “Gray has the look of a latter-day William Blake, with his extravagant myth-making, his strong social conscience, his liberating vision of sexuality and his flashes of righteous indignation tempered with scathing wit and sly self-mockery.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “This work of inspired lunacy effectively skewers class snobbery, British imperialism, prudishness and the tenets of received wisdom.”—Publishers Weekly

To the modern mind, the concept of poverty is often confused with destitution. But destitution emphatically is not the Gospel ideal. A love-filled sharing frugality is the message, and Happy Are You Poor explains the meaning of this beatitude lived and taught by Jesus himself. But isn't simplicity in lifestyle meant only for nuns and priests? Are not all of us to enjoy the goodness and beauties of our magnificent creation? Are parents to be frugal with the children they love so much? The renowned spiritual writer Dubay gives surprising replies to these questions. He explains how material things are like extensions of our persons and thus of our love. If everyone lived this love there would be no destitution. After presenting the richness of the Gospel message, more beautiful than any other world view, he explains how Gospel frugality is lived in each state of life.

“A competent, thorough assessment from a veteran expert in the field.” —Kirkus Reviews Income disparities in our wealthy nation are wider than at any point since the Great Depression. The structure of today’s economy has stultified wage growth for half of America’s workers—with even worse results at the bottom and for people of color—while bestowing billions on the few at the very top. In this “accessible and inspiring analysis”, lifelong anti-poverty advocate Peter Edelman assesses how the United States can have such an outsized number of unemployed and working poor despite important policy gains. He delves into what is happening to the people behind the statistics and takes a particular look at young people of color, for whom the possibility of productive lives is too often lost on the way to adulthood (Angela Glover Blackwell). For anyone who wants to understand one of the critical issues of twenty-first century America, So Rich, So Poor is “engaging and informative” (William Julius Wilson) and “powerful and eloquent” (Wade Henderson).

At the age of 48, Moritz Thomsen sold his pig farm and joined the Peace Corps. As he tells the story, his awareness of the comic elements in the human situation--including his own--and his ability to convey it in fast-moving, earthy prose have madeLiving Poora classic. "Hilariously funny at times, grimly sad at others and elavened with perceptive insights into the ways of the people and with breathtaking descriptions of the Ecuadorian landscape."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

* Argues strongly for overlooked approach to development by showing how the poor use money in ways that confound stereotypical notions of aid and handouts * Team authored by foremost scholars in the development field Amid all the complicated economic theories about the causes and solutions to poverty, one idea is so basic it seems radical: just give money to the poor. Despite its skeptics, researchers have found again and again that cash transfers given to significant portions of the population transform the lives of recipients. Countries from Mexico to South Africa to Indonesia are giving money directly to the poor and discovering that they use it wisely “ to send their children to school, to start a business and to feed their families. Directly challenging an aid industry that thrives on complexity and mystification, with highly paid consultants designing ever more complicated projects, Just Give Money to the Pooroffers the elegant southern alternative “ bypass governments and NGOs and let the poor decide how to use their money. Stressing that cash transfers are not charity or a safety net, the authors draw an outline of effective practices that work precisely because they are regular, guaranteed and fair. This book, the first to report on this quiet revolution in an accessible way, is essential reading for policymakers, students of international development and anyone yearning for an alternative to traditional poverty-alleviation methods.

"Collecting dozens of interviews conducted over 50 years to give voice to the 16 percent that live below the poverty line, journalist Kenan Heise ... addresses unemployment, prison, nutrition needs and hunger, the lives of impoverished children, panhandling, health-care struggles, the role of race in poverty, and Dumpster diving"--P. [4] of cover.