"Richard R. Troxell's book Short Stories in a Long Journey blends his personal story with the life of an activist for ending and preventing homelessness. This book highlights the structural defects in our system and laws and proposes common-sense economic solutions to the problems of homelessness and substance abuse, such as the Universal Living Wage to address income inequality, a modest liquor surcharge to finance substance treatment, and a bronze...

"The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories is a collection about dishwashers, veterans, people who sleep outside, people who look through dumpsters, sandwich-makers, people who drive ice cream trucks, people who work in factories that manufacture pieces of metal, people who clean up after weddings, and other people who are not often the subject of books. It is very funny, tender-hearted, vivid, briefly and beautifully surreal at times"--

"Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 28 out of 3,140 counties in America. The single worst place in the United States to look for affordable housing is Osceola County, Florida. Once the main approach to Disney World, where vacationers found lodging on their way to the Magic Kingdom, the fifteen-mile Route 192 corridor in Osceola has become a site of shocking contrasts. At one end, absentee investors snatch up foreclosed...

"From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon's CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming...

The in-depth look at poverty in America and beyond explores what its causes are, what its effects are, and if there's hope to improve the situation.

"I dream sometimes about a house I've never seen. Opal is a lot of things;orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier;but above all, she's determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago. All she left behind...

Stephanie Land's memoir Maid was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. Her escape out of poverty and abuse in search of a better life inspired millions. In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t...