Poverty & Homelessness

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans....

Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter, weaving the story of her childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north....

At 28, Stephanie Land's dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet....

In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge....

This engrossing piece of undercover reportage has been a fixture on the New York Times best seller list since its publication....

Poverty is much more than simply a lack of material resources, and it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve it....

Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world’s poor....

Bridges Out of Poverty is a unique and powerful tool designed specifically for social, health, and legal services professionals....

The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known - and cautiously avoided - by most of Baltimore. But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood.... 

In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels....

An inspiring personal story of redemption, second chances, and the transformative power within us all, from the founder and CEO of the nonprofit charity: water....

For David and his two siblings, their mother’s diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia sets them in motion for a life of poverty, violence, and instability as they travel across New York and New England seeking shelter....

Do you want to make a true difference in the world? Dr. Ron Sider does. He has, since before he first published Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger in 1978....

Teeth takes listeners on a disturbing journey into America's silent epidemic of oral disease, exposing the hidden connections between tooth decay and stunted job prospects....

Armed with a flashlight, tape recorder, and expandable baton, Las Vegas CityLife writer-editor Matthew O'Brien explored the Las Vegas flood-control system for more than four years. This audiobook chronicles O'Brien's adventures in subterranean Vegas....

With stark poignancy and political dispassion, Tightrope draws us deep into an "other America". The authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up in rural Yamhill, Oregon....

In this powerful and culminating work about a group of inner-city children he has known for many years, Jonathan Kozol returns to the scene of his prize-winning books Rachel and Her Children and Amazing Grace....

When the dead body of a 10-year-old boy is discovered under a heap of garbage in Lusaka’s largest landfill, a murder investigation quickly heats up due to the influence of the victim’s mother and her far-reaching political connections....

On any given night, more than half a million Americans and Canadians find themselves sleeping on the streets, in shelters, cars, and other places not meant for human habitation. Yet as this crisis continues to grow, it remains one of the least talked about—especially in churches....

Sixty percent of humanity - some four-point-three billion people - live in debilitating poverty. The standard development narrative suggests that alleviating poverty in poor countries is a matter of getting the internal policies right....

​This piercingly intelligent book shows how bygone policy decisions have left us with skyrocketing income inequality and poverty in America and widened fractures within the Democratic Party that persist to this day....

Katie Martin presents a new model for charitable food, one where success is measured not by pounds of food distributed but by lives changed....

Arleen spends nearly all her money on rent but is kicked out with her kids in Milwaukee's coldest winter for years....

High-Risers braids personal narratives, city politics, and national history to tell the timely and epic story of Chicago's Cabrini-Green, America's most iconic public housing project....

Shannon, Wally, and John built their lives around their place of work. Shannon, a white single mother, became the first woman to run the dangerous furnaces at the Rexnord manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was proud of producing one of the world’s top brands....

"There are children in Holbeck without crayons. Living in a city with an opera company. An opera company paid for with money from all of us. Until everyone has crayons, no one gets opera. That’s what I believe." A deeply moving memoir of how a group of artists fed their local community during the COVID pandemic. When crisis hits and audiences stay home, what’s the most useful thing a theater company can do? The answer was to become a food bank and one-stop help shop for those in need. In 15 months, Slung Low would go on to deliver over 15,000 food parcels.

Growing up in a prosperous neighborhood, B. Morrison was taught that poverty was a product of laziness and public assistance programs only rewarded irresponsibility. However, when her marriage soured, she abruptly found herself an impoverished single mother. Disowned by her parents and facing destitution for herself and her two small sons, she was forced to accept the handout so disdained by her parents and their world: welfare. This dramatic memoir tells how one woman finds and grasps the lifeline that ultimately enables her to become independent.

On any given night, more than half a million Americans and Canadians find themselves sleeping on the streets, in shelters, cars, and other places not meant for human habitation. Yet as this crisis continues to grow, it remains one of the least talked about—especially in churches. Kevin Nye introduces listeners to the Christ he’s met in tents, shelters, and drop-in centers. He demystifies homelessness by journeying into complex issues like affordable housing, mental illness, addiction, and more, while reimagining our theological approach to these matters.

This landmark treatise by the great economist Henry George was first published in 1879. George's work became the seminal analysis of the political economy which inspired most, if not all, the prominent thinkers of the Progressive Movement and many others of great influence: Upton Sinclair, John Dewey, George Bernard Shaw, Friedrich Hayek, H. G. Wells, Clarence Darrow, and Leo Tolstoy, to name but a few. His analyses and proposals are referred to as "Georgism".

Uncle Sam’s Plantation is an incisive look at how government manipulates, controls, and ultimately devastates the lives of the poor—and what Americans must do to stop it. Once a hustler and welfare addict who was chewed up and spit out by the ruthless welfare system, Star Parker sheds much needed light on the bungled bureaucratic attempts to end poverty and reveals the insidious deceptions perpetrated by self-serving politicians.