Alamosa Public Library

"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...

In this book, Nancy Isenberg reveals that the wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlements to today's hillbillies. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise...

There is a protagonist: forty-something Miles Roby, proprietor of the local greasy spoon and the recently divorced father of a teenage daughter. We meet his ex-wife Janine, his father Max, and a host of Empire Grill regulars. To further complicate things, Miles's brother, David, is suspected of dealing marijuana.

"A debut memoir of grit and tenacity, as one young woman returns to the conservative hometown she always longed to escape to earn a living in the steel mill that casts a shadow over Cleveland. Steel is the only thing that shines in the belly of the mill... To ArcelorMittal Steel Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown and come to terms with her Christian...

Chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums.

Early April 1933. To the costermongers of Covent Garden - sellers of fruit and vegetables on the streets of London - Eddie Pettit was a gentle soul with a near-magical gift for working with horses. When Eddie is killed in a violent accident, the grieving costers are deeply skeptical about the cause of his death. Who would want to kill Eddie and why?

A powerful portrait of blue-collar America, a timeless tribute to the inherent decency and good humor that sustains working-class people in everyday life.

"Across a bend of Ontario's Attawan River lies the Island, a small, working-class neighborhood of whitewashed houses and vine-freighted fences, black willows and decaying sheds. Here, for generations, the Walkers have lived among the other mill workers." "The family's troubles begin in the summer of 1965, when a union organizer comes to town and Alf Walker is forced to choose between loyalty to his friends at the mill and advancement up the company...

"To follow her dreams, she must sacrifice everything. Sisters Nora and Delia have been given the chance of a lifetime - to escape their poor Irish farm and travel on the Titanic to a new life in America. Delia is to become a treasured governess for a rich family, while Nora has only a lowly maid's position. But when disaster strikes, and Delia dies, a small misunderstanding leads to Nora taking Delia's place as governess. As Nora grows closer to her...