Shares the story of the author's family and upbringing, describing how they moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan that included the author, a Yale Law School graduate, while navigating the demands of middle class life and the collective demons of the past. 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...

With Empire Falls Richard Russo cements his reputation as one of America's most compelling and compassionate storytellers. Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's taken...

Semiautobiographical novel by D.H. Lawrence, published in 1913. His first mature novel, it is a psychological study of the familial and love relationships of a working-class English family. The novel revolves around Paul Morel, a sensitive young artist whose love for his mother, Gertrude, overshadows his romances with two women: Miriam Leivers, his repressed, religious girlfriend, and Clara Dawes, an experienced, independent married woman. Unable...

"A book on why most things are more expensive or lower quality, and why we're all still working long hours for the same or lower wages. Does it ever seem like most things you buy are more expensive or not as good as they once were, or both? Does it ever seem odd that, despite having access to much better communication and cheaper transportation, we're all working just as many hours and for the same wages as workers decades ago? Well, we now know you're...

In this sweeping multi-generational saga that is set in a nineteenth-century village in northern England, Bridget Mordaunt oversees the candle and blacking factories she inherited

"In the 1950s, Ellie and Brick are teenagers in love. A basketball star, Brick could escape his abusive father and be the first person in his working-class family to go to college. But when Ellie becomes pregnant, they marry, she gives up her dream of nursing school, and Brick gets a union card instead. This riveting novel tells the story of three generations in a working-class family; especially Brick and Ellie's daughter Samantha. Illuminating issues...

"Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for his artistic brother and practical sister. She dreams of...

Adapted from a 1909 novel by Jack London yet set in a provocatively unspecified moment in Italy's history, this is a passionate and enthralling story in the tradition of great Italian classics. Martin is a self-taught proletarian with artistic aspirations who hopes that his dreams of becoming a writer will help him rise above his station and marry a wealthy university student. The dissatisfactions of working-class toil and bourgeois success lead to...

A plea--deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans--to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Through the lives of real Americans, Kristof and WuDunn address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Rural Yamhill, Oregon, prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been...

"The Beans of Egypt, Maine introduced the world to the notorious, unforgettable Bean clan of small town Egypt, Maine--from wild man Reuben, an alcoholic who can't seem to keep himself out of jail; to his cousins, the perpetually pregnant Roberta, and Beal, a man gentle by temperament but violent in defeat who marries his pious neighbor, Earlene Pomerleau before poverty kills him. As the Beans struggled with their inner demons to survive against hardship...