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Author
Language
English
Description
"An eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in the American Midwest. During Sarah Smarsh's turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and 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 look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about...
Author
Language
English
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Description
Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like...
3) Titans
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Texas in the early 1900s, its inhabitants still traveling by horseback and barely familiar with the telephone, was on the cusp of an oil boom that, unbeknownst to its residents, would spark a period of dramatic changes and economic growth. In the midst of this transformative time in Southern history, two unforgettable characters emerge and find their fates irrevocably intertwined: Samantha Gordon, the privileged heiress to the sprawling Las Tres...
Author
Publisher
University Press of Kansas
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
"In this work of creative nonfiction, Kate Benz provides an intimate look at the present-day residents of Courtland, Kansas (population 285), a town whose economy depends almost entirely on agriculture. Her narrative shows how macro-level issues, from rising tariffs and operation costs to sinking commodity prices and infusions of federal farm subsidies affect these Americans' daily lives, and how their love of their community continues their collective...
Author
Language
English
Description
The author's grandfather, Sam Stone, placed an ad in the Canton, OH, newspaper shortly before Christmas in 1933, offering cash gifts to seventy-five families in distress. Readers were asked to send letters describing their hardships to a benefactor calling himself Mr. B. Virdot. The author investigates a suitcase full of letters responding to these ads as he learns more about his grandfather's hidden past as well as the suffering and triumphs of strangers...
Author
Publisher
Riverhead Books
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
"How did a single manhunt spark the modern era of multinational capitalism? Henry Avery was the seventeenth century's most notorious pirate. The press published wildly popular--and wildly inaccurate--reports of his nefarious adventures. The British government offered enormous bounties for his capture, alive or (preferably) dead. But Steven Johnson argues that Avery's most lasting legacy was his inadvertent triggering of a new model for the global...