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From:David K. Shipler , Knopf ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#88358 |
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4 of 4 customers found the following review helpful:
 poverty as both cause and effect, 2007-01-18
As a relative latecomer to the Gospel (he converted on the road to Damascus about the year 35 AD), the Apostle Paul traveled to Jerusalem about fourteen years after his conversion in order to present his credentials to the original group of Apostles. He needed their imprimatur, and indeed received what he calls "the right hand of fellowship" from the movement's leaders. Recalling this trip in his letter to the Galatian believers, Paul tells us something fascinating about the first followers of Jesus. What did they require of Paul? "All they asked was that we should remember the poor" (Galatians 2:10).
Pulitzer Prize winner David Shipler has written a passionate book about the poor. One measure of a society, and certainly of Christianity, is its care for the weak, the vulnerable and the poor. Shipler focuses on a special sort of poor, not the destitute but what he calls the "working poor." These are the people we pass every day who make our American way of life possible. They clean our office buildings at night, serve us at restaurants, repair our cars, sew our designer garments, handpick our fresh produce, and so on.
The challenges this substantial part of our population face are immense, complex, and interrelated: "A run-down apartment can exacerbate a child's asthma, which leads to a call for an ambulance, which generates a medical bill that cannot be paid, which ruins a credit record, which hikes the interest rate on an auto loan, which forces the purchase of an unreliable used car, which jeopardizes a mother's punctuality at work, which limits her promotions and earning capacity, which confines her to poor housing" (p. 11).
Shipler avoids blaming the liberal left or the conservative right. Poverty is a cause of problems and the result of problems. The solution? In his final chapter he focuses on "skill and will." The resources and skill to help the poor are generally present, but what we lack, he laments, is the political will to prioritize care for the poor. In a culture which prizes and praises getting ahead, Shipler offers an eloquent call to care for those among us who have been left behind.
Great Reading, 2007-01-09
This is a book everyone in America should read. It shows many sides of the poverty issue. It does get confusing sometimes with which individual she is talking about but is easy, interesting reading.
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
Fascinating Read, 2006-12-12
This book reminds us that the working poor are among the hardest working in the nation despite their low wages and substandard working conditions. Shipler expertly pieces together the stories of those stuck in this people group with background info, historical data and explanation. Now, if only Shipler had told us what we could do about it...
5 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
The American Dream: A Raisin in the Sun, 2006-12-07
The maxim of work hard and achieve your own version of the American Dream proves to be no longer the case for many in David K. Shipler's "The Working Poor". Shipler follows several families and individuals who are working, but barely able to afford the basics--shelter, food, and clothes. The author is a witness to their lives over several years as job loss, health problems, addiction, low wages, poor decisions and fear prevail. Shipler unravels the sticky web that the working poor seem to have found themselves meshed within. Not one factor such as low education holds the poor down, but a veritable string of woes that form a symbiotic web often too powerful to break.
Shipler is deft in connecting the dots within "The Working Poor". For example, a single mother of one child can only afford rent in a drafty, moldy apartment. The mold exacerbates the child's asthma. The mother's employer is growing weary of her taking time off to take the child to the doctor. Despite numerous pleas, the landlord will not fix the mold problem. The child's condition worsens, therefore increased doctor visits are made and eventually the mother is fired. In order to make ends meet, she uses a credit card (an extremely high-interest card since she falls within the low-income bracket and has bad credit from previous mishaps).
Although there are some success stories to be found, the overall prevailing theme is one of decent hard-working people still facing poverty. Of course, laziness, drug issues and other factors have placed some individuals into the depths of destitution through their own hands. But Shipler eruditely points out numerous circumstances that have put many behind the eight ball through no fault of their own, most notably an educational system that fails to provide the basic skills of reading and writing. Couple low education with global competition and the individual's only choice of work are menial jobs that pay non-livable wages.
"The Working Poor" is powerful for it follows several lives over a significant period of time; this process allows the reader to clearly see the totality of the poor's struggles. Shipler's research displays the poverty issue as being more complex than what may what appear on the surface to those living a comfortable distance from the edge of poverty. Shipler elucidates obstacles and bureaucracy that have made The American Dream a raisin in the sun for far too many hard-working men and women.
Bohdan Kot
2 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
Helping the poor helps relieve us of our spiritual poverty, 2006-11-06
Shipler's book is an eye opener. We in the US tend to think of ourselves as a wealthy nation, which we are, and that we all share in that wealth (or at least have an equal chance at becoming wealthy). Maybe at some point in our history that might have been true, but it is far from true now. We have institutionalize so many economic barriers, that some of our citizens can never escape the poverty trap.
This book gives readers the most important tool in finding the solution to poverty--AWARENESS. We need to look beyond our small corners of the country and of society and take steps to tear down the barriers.
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