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“A must read for anyone interested in learning the real story of poverty, social welfare policy, and social change.”
—Mimi Abramovitz, Hunter College School of Social Work and the Graduate Center, CUNY
“This book is long overdue. Stephen Pimpare reveals how long-standing American societal prejudices have led to poverty policy that regulates, exploits, and dehumanizes the poor rather than addressing the root causes.”
—Sondra Youdelman, Community Voices Heard
[A] sympathetic social history that allows poor people, past and present, to tell their own remarkably
similar stories.
—Bookforum
A concise and distinctive bottom-up history.
—Library Journal
The voices of the poor give valuable insights into the experience of poverty.
—Choice
[A] deft and highly readable weaving of historical and contemporary material. . . . This is exactly the history that needs to be uncovered in America today.
—Socialist Worker
A People’s History of Poverty in America
A New Press People's History
Howard Zinn, Series Editor
paperback
$21.95
Now in paperback: An “exceptionally thought-provoking and troubling” (City Limits) history of poverty in America, told through the eyes and experiences of the poor themselves
Stephen Pimpare has given the poor a voice that reveals not only the terrible want but the sharply punishing indignity of being poor in a culture that celebrates affluence. We need this book.
—Frances Fox Piven, author of Poor People’s Movements
—Frances Fox Piven, author of Poor People’s Movements
Tens of millions of Americans currently live in poverty, more and more of them in extreme poverty. But the words we use to describe them tend to obscure rather than illuminate the human lives and real-life stories behind the statistics.
A “sympathetic social history that allows poor people, past and present, to tell their own remarkably similar stories” (Booklist), A People’s History of Poverty in America movingly brings to life poor people’s everyday battles for dignity and respect in the face of the judgment, control, and disdain that are all too often the price they must pay for charity and government aid.
Through prodigious research, Stephen Pimpare has unearthed poignant and often surprising testimonies and accounts that range from the early days of the United States to the complex social and economic terrain of the present. A work of sweeping analysis, A People’s History of Poverty in America reminds us that poverty is not in itself a moral failure, though our failure to understand it may well be.
Stephen Pimpare is the author of The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics, and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages (The New Press).
A “sympathetic social history that allows poor people, past and present, to tell their own remarkably similar stories” (Booklist), A People’s History of Poverty in America movingly brings to life poor people’s everyday battles for dignity and respect in the face of the judgment, control, and disdain that are all too often the price they must pay for charity and government aid.
Through prodigious research, Stephen Pimpare has unearthed poignant and often surprising testimonies and accounts that range from the early days of the United States to the complex social and economic terrain of the present. A work of sweeping analysis, A People’s History of Poverty in America reminds us that poverty is not in itself a moral failure, though our failure to understand it may well be.
Stephen Pimpare is the author of The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics, and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages (The New Press).
Spring 2011
paperback
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 336 pages
978-1-59558-672-8
paperback
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 336 pages
978-1-59558-672-8
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