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 class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like...

"The story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. Born under different stars--Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a...

Named by the Guardian as one of our top ten writers of rural noir, Bonnie Jo Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel, and funny. The strong but flawed women of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor, and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world. Such richly fraught mother-daughter...

Wisconsin's workers and their leaders have always been in the vanguard of those concerned with social justice, fair labor practices, humane working conditions, and political equality. Professor Ozanne's book, based upon years of research in newspapers, manuscripts, and the archives of both labor and management, provides a broad overview of an important chapter in Wisconsin history.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created...

This novel is told from the point of view of Philip Pirrip, nicknamed Pip, who begins his tale as a young boy visiting the graves of his parents when an escaped convict happens upon him and threatens him into helping him get food. This experience will have a huge impact on Pip's life, although just how huge is left to be discovered until much later in the novel. Pip soon finds himself in the service of an eccentrically, manically wounded old woman...

The original desperate housewife is at it again in Season 8 of Roseanne! It was a year that started with Roseanne's baby shower, DJ's Thanksgiving pageant, Jackie's internet addiction, two different Beckys and the arrival of Jerry Garcia Connor. It was the season of Darlene's wedding, Dan's heart attack, award winning loose-meat sandwiches, Ouija board horrors and supermarket samples. The 50s sitcom tribute and the Connor family trip to Disney World...

"Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America's civil rights movement. These are only some of the...

"Orphans Gig and Rye Dolan don't have a penny to their names. The brothers work grueling, odd jobs each day just to secure a meal, and spend nights sleeping wherever they can with other day laborers. Twenty-three-year-old Gig is a passionate union man, fighting for fair pay and calling out the corrupt employers who exploit the working class. Eager to emulate his older brother, Rye follows suit, though he can't quite muster Gig's passion for the cause....