Rating: 
Summary: EVERY American Needs to Read It!
Review: I loved this book and feel that EVERY American should read it. I do agree with the reviewer that gave it 10 stars. This is an outstanding body of work. OUCH!!! I consider myself a "righty" more than a "lefty" and to be honest, this book made me think LONG and HARD. Read it!!!!! Dr. Michael L. Johnson author of "What Do You Do When the Medications Don't Work?--A Non-Drug Treatment of Dizziness, Migraine Headaches, Fibromyalgia, and Other Chronic Conditions".
Rating:
Summary: Makes you think twice
Review: I requested this book from the library after seeing an episode of Nightline with Ted Koppel. This book really does make you stop and think about how different our lives really are in America. I hate to admit this, but I usually don't pay too much attention to the people who are on the edge of poverty, working the jobs that most of us will never have to work. Now, when I go to the fast food window or to a Kmart or Walmart, I realize that many of these workers are not getting paid well, and probably cannot even afford to shop at the stores they work in, or buy food at the fast food place either. I'm not the best writer, but please take a look at this book if you get the chance. Maybe it will help you to understand what these people are going through.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book and then share it with everyone you know
Review: I want to send a copy of this book to President Bush every day until he reads it and gives a report on his thoughts. Either that or I could read it over a bullhorn daily at the White House.
David Shipler nailed the plight of the poor in American on the head, and the chapters on migrant workers make you ashamed for pinching pennies on produce. It makes you wonder that if there was a photo of the suffering farm workers posted above the carrots or celery, would people still be willing to skimp on price? We all pass the buck, but Shipler shows that we all take responsibility for the suffering of the people in these pages.
As someone who only graduated college a few years back and worked menial jobs to pay bills, eat and pay rent, I KNOW the struggle these people go through to exist on a daily basis. Because I got an expensive education (for which I owe tens of thousands of dollars) I only temporarily experienced the poverty they're stuck in, but I understand what they're going through. I wish every American was forced to walk in their shoes and get this perspective at some point in their lives.
The sad fact is that in today's America, unless you have family members to borrow money from or to help you out when you're down, you are taken advantage of by the system. It's criminal that the people who have the least money pay the most in fees and interest rates to banks for abstract services. The banks get money for nothing, literally. Then these banks "invest" money in political campaigns so that our lawmakers make it easier for them and harder for working Americans to hold onto their money.
What is the answer to this? Campaign Finance Reform! When politicians have to answer to the PEOPLE rather than corporations, they will change their tunes.
Please read this book and tell everyone you know to read it as well, it will change your view of capitalism and if you have an ounce of conscience, it will put you to shame.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Works
Review: In the land of the American Dream, it can be easy to turn a calloused heart to the plight of the poverty-stricken. After all they aren't victims...the American Dream is that people can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and with enough gumption and verve the plight of poverty can easily be broken if there is enough desire.
Shipler's book proves that is not the case. By getting into the fabric of the lives of the working poor who have given the American Dream a shot but found that dream has failed them, Shipler gives us an insider's eye to the dynamic multi-facted issues behind poverty. To break the cycle often-times requires that the planets are aligned, life must be just so, Murphy's Law needs to be suspended for a time. Shipler shows that the minimum wage is not a livable wage. Payday loans and tax return companies are wolves in wolves clothing. They take advantage of the people who can least afford to be taken advantage of...those that are in financial crisis to begin with.
Shipler, who had such success telling the personal side of things in "The Arab and the Jew," is in good form taking on the issue of poverty in "The Working Poor." As a measure of how a society is to be judges, one should look at how the poor and how children are treated. When we are viewed in history's eye, I wonder how we will be judged.
We can hear the message of David Shipler in this book and listen and listen hard. If so, we will be called to act.
--MMW
Rating:
Summary: It was Time for this book
Review: It was Time for this book
Absolutely time for this book to come out and show the world what the real life human beings/people of this USA have to live with and through. It is an honest look at todays society and well worth the purchase.
Ever since the Bush administration has taken over we have less and less value as citizens in this great country. We can not afford our homes nor afford a decent car...life is not good for us that puts in 60 hour weeks and still not have enough left over for a trip to McDonald's with our kids. Several other books I would like to mention: Nightmares Echo, Tuesdays with Morrie, Lost Boy
Rating:
Summary: Sobering and disturbing
Review: Like Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, this book will make you think twice and notice the cashier who rings up your purchase at Walmart, the worker who bags your Whopper at the local Burger King, the laborer who picks your vegetables, and all sorts of other people who make our lives more comfortable and convenient, but live every day on the edge of hunger and homelessness. While conservatives are eager to feed us soundbites about the laziness and dishonesty of those on welfare, this book puts a face on a problem that impacts all of us through stories of real people and families, and delves deeply into the social causes and real costs of poverty. Highly recommended to anyone who has ever taken a full stomach and a warm, safe home for granted.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, realistic and balanced portrayal of our society
Review: Rivetting! It's hard to put the book down.
Shipler describes the families I work with, on a daily basis, to the tee and his analysis of macro systems is on the mark.
"Working Poor" IS an oxymoron.
In a country of such affluence, consumer consumption, corporate & individual greed, mean-spiritedness, and a general decline of a belief in the public good for all citizens...what "should" not exist (Working Poor) is a sad reality and unfortunate legacy of our times.
Rating:
Summary: We need much more of this!
Review: Shipler only touches on the real problems with workers in America but does perform a valuable service in doing so.
Take someone working at a major retail chain,say a Home Depot or Walmart.. What is it like working for such a firm?
For one thing, longevity in employee base is not preferred. Turnover needs to be high to keep wages low, so enormous pressure is brought in the form of 'metrics','quality', 'customer management' and whatever politically correct term is used. Workers are continually threatened with the loss of their job 'just around the corner' as sales and revenue ALWAYS falls short of the mark.Many times large firms such as these exploit desperate workers in a bad economy,capitalizing on intellectual capital as an intangible asset applied to an undervalued stock for those in the know. Sometimes in big firms there is a systematic institutional harassment that goes on to ensure proper 'attrition' in employee base. Because management decides to run extremely low staffing while maintaining exceptionally high productivity standards, employees are put into a situation to fail in the eyes of the customer, who rarely has direct contact with the real authority which allocates resources to provide them with goods and services. In large firms,' innovation', "thinking outside the box" and so on are encouraged but when it is done and expressed those individuals are penalized or given token symbols of appreciation.
Among large firms which develop patents, many times the principal scientist(s)are only symbolically rewarded,stifling invention and innovation.One Fortune 500 company was known for giving a principal innovator a plaque plus $250.00 for an invention which might yield for the corporation millions in the fairly short term.
Some corporations, if a woman files a sexual harassment complaint, she is pressured to settle and sign a secrecy agreement which includes never being able to work for that company again.
Other large corporatons are shells for government agendas pushed into the economy as the workings of simply a large,powerful business entity.
Rating: 
Summary: Untruthful, biased propaganda for the already converted
Review: Shipler preaches to the choir of those who believe the United States is a horrible place, it's political system more oppressive than the former Soviet Union and that more government bureaucracy and taxpayer money alone can solve a given problem. Shipler begins with an untrue thesis: "Workers at the edge of poverty are essential to America's prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole [whatever that is supposed to mean] . . . It is time to be ashamed." Shipler's agenda is clear: take the money from taxpayers and give it to other people. Wealth redistribution to some, Marxism or socialism to others, Shipler's idea is to strip some of their earnings in order to "lift" those who have failed to take advantage of the opportunities offered in this country - or have other problems, such as drug addiction and alcoholism. Shipler makes his biases clear through blanket statements such as liberals support intact families while conservatives demand dysfunctional families. He offers no support for such claims - and it is unlikely that such blatant generalizations could be supported. Ultimately Shipler gives away his own flawed perspspective. He claims "[a]s the the people in these pages show, working poverty is a constellation of difficulties that magnify one another: not just low wages but also low education; not just dead-end jobs, but also limited abilities, not just insufficient savings but also unwise spending, not just poor housing but also poor parenting, not jsut the lack of health insurance but also the lack of healthy households." Two paragraphs later he asserts "[a]ll of the problems have to be attacked at once." Like those revolutionaries (a tiny band) who gave birth to the long discredited concept of the "New Soviet Man," Shipler's solution would require the vast majority of responsible, hard-working people to surrender their own limited money and freedom to serve the needs of the few who have squandered their opportunities, consciously made poor decisions that they blame others for and refuse to take responsibility for. Unrepentant Marxists, unthinking do-gooders and those who want everyone to share equally in misery will love this book. Others not so inclined may feel a chill that Shipler and his fellow-travellers have failed to learn the lessons of history: "from each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs" was a philosophy that impoverished billions and murdered hundreds of millions. It didn't work then and it won't work now. Shipler's tome, stripped of its sugarcoating, is nothing more than warmed over Marxist cant. Jerry
Rating:
Summary: trash
Review: Some trash I had to read for school. Don't waste your time or money.
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