Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It
Twenty-five million Americans-nearly 9 percent of the U.S. population-rely on food pantries. Another 13 million aren't linked to a food distribution network, and 14 million children are at risk of going hungry on any given day. Meanwhile, the faltering economy is increasing the number of American families that don't know where their next meals are coming from.Breadline USA treats this crisis not only as matter of failed policies, but also as a portrait of real human suffering. Investigative...
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Trapped in a triangle of the housing market collapse, rising energy costs, and an increasingly dysfunctional healthcare system, America's working poor are now battling an even more formidable enemy: hunger. This time, the battle is taking place well outside of the media spotlight, which has focused on obesity, another food-related epidemic affecting the poor. Breadline USA tells the stories of Americans in all types of communities who struggle to put any type of food on the table come the end of the month when money runs out and the social safety net isnt there to catch them. Publishers Weekly Journalist Abramsky (Hard Times Blues) combines an account of his own seven-week experiment in living on a poverty budget with moving vignettes of men and women who have fallen through society's frayed safety net and are suffering from "food insecurity." Tens of millions of Americans live in "a continual state of anxiety"; to malnutrition is added the further suffering of shame and despair. Focusing on communities in Western states, the author uncovers the tragedy of the collapse of the middle class. Unionized industrial giants like General Motors have fallen on hard times and global economic restructuring has had a devastating impact on many workers, often stripping them of benefits accumulated over decades. Although providing a vivid glimpse into the world of food banks and soup kitchens, the book, which reads like a series of newspaper articles, offers few suggestions for solving the problem aside from challenging political leaders to make corrections to a system gone tragically awry. (June)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Acknowledgments ixNote on Sources xiiiPrologue 1Chapter 1 Driving to Hunger 21Interlude I 49Chapter 2 When the Month Is Longer Than the Money 55Interlude II 71Chapter 3 Trickle-up Poverty 79Interlude III 101Chapter 4 Big-Box Special 107Interlude IV 141Chapter 5 Elderly, Angry, and Looking for Work 145Interlude V 165Chapter 6 Grapes of Wrath Regurgitated 169Conclusion: After the Fall 195Index 201
\ Publishers WeeklyJournalist Abramsky (Hard Times Blues) combines an account of his own seven-week experiment in living on a poverty budget with moving vignettes of men and women who have fallen through society's frayed safety net and are suffering from "food insecurity." Tens of millions of Americans live in "a continual state of anxiety"; to malnutrition is added the further suffering of shame and despair. Focusing on communities in Western states, the author uncovers the tragedy of the collapse of the middle class. Unionized industrial giants like General Motors have fallen on hard times and global economic restructuring has had a devastating impact on many workers, often stripping them of benefits accumulated over decades. Although providing a vivid glimpse into the world of food banks and soup kitchens, the book, which reads like a series of newspaper articles, offers few suggestions for solving the problem aside from challenging political leaders to make corrections to a system gone tragically awry. (June)\ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \
