One of TIME’s Best New Books to Read This Summer
“Brilliant—a keen, elegantly written, and scorching account of the American family today. Through vivid stories, sharp analysis and wit, Quart anatomizes the middle class’s fall while also offering solutions and hope.” — Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed
Families today are squeezed on every side—from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours. Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible.
Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects—from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses—have been wrung out by a system that doesn’t support them, and enriches only a tiny elite.
Interlacing her own experience with close-up reporting on families that are just getting by, Quart reveals parenthood itself to be financially overwhelming, except for the wealthiest. She offers real solutions to these problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood and caregiving. 
Written in the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich and Jennifer Senior, Squeezed is an eye-opening page-turner. Powerfully argued, deeply reported, and ultimately hopeful, it casts a bright, clarifying light on families struggling to thrive in an economy that holds too few options. It will make readers think differently about their lives and those of their neighbors.

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America

Business & Money

QUART, ALISSA

Economics

Ecco

Squeezed

Quart, Alissa, Author

Ecco, An Imprint Of Harpercollins Publishers

Bootstrapped: Exposing the Myth of the Self-Made and the Rugged Individualist, From “Little House” to Horatio Alger

Product Description An unsparing, incisive, yet ultimately hopeful look at how we can shed an American obsession with self-reliance that has made us less equal, less healthy, less productive, and less fulfilledThe promise that you can “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is central to the story of the American dream. It’s the belief that if you work hard and rely on your own resources, you will ultimately succeed. However, time and again we have seen the way this foundational myth, with its emphasis on individual determination, brittle self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment, does not help us. Instead, as income inequality rises around us, we are left with shame and self-blame for our condition.Acclaimed journalist Alissa Quart argues that at the root of our suffering is the misplaced belief in our own independence and the conviction that we must rely on ourselves alone, a do-it-yourself ethos. Looking at a range of delusions and half solutions—from “grit” to the deceptions of hyper-capitalist philanthropy, from the false Horatio Alger story to the rise of GoFundMe—Quart reveals how we were steered away from robust social programs that would address the root causes of our problems. Meanwhile, the responsibility for survival has been shifted onto the backs of ordinary people, burdening generations with debt instead of providing free higher education or universal health care.Insightful, sharply argued, and characterized by Quart’s lively writing and deep reporting, and for readers of Evicted and Nickel and Dimed, Bootstrapped is a powerful examination of what ails us at a societal level—the corruption at the foundations of our American experiment—and how we can free ourselves of these self-defeating narratives. About the Author Alissa Quart is the author of four previous books of nonfiction, including Squeezed and Branded, and two books of poetry. She is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and writes for publications including the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Her honors include an Emmy, a Nieman Fellowship, and Columbia University’s Journalism School Alumna of the Year. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.

An exposé of the ways in which today’s children are being driven ever harder to succeed.Alissa Quart’s deeply disturbing account looks at the intensely competitive and frenzied lives of America’s children. Travelling the country and talking to scores of parents, teachers and children she looks at the overhyped world of baby edutainment and ‘better baby’ early education prorammes, takes the lid off the world of IQ testing and child competitions, and explores the lives of particular children who have been identified as prodigies — from a four-year-old painter whose works sell for $300,000 to an eight-year-old professional skateboarder who is backed by nine corporate sponsors.She asks the questions that many parents find themselves asking. Where should parents and teachers draw the line? How do we establish when children are being under-stimulated or over-stretched? And can the hothousing of children lead to irreparable problems later in life? Hothouse Kids is a thought-provoking, often shocking exploration of a subject that is only too worryingly topical.

Hothouse Kids

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Arrow

An investigation into the pressures placed on today's gifted children evaluates the long-term consequences of high demands and competitiveness, revealing the truth about current practices in IQ testing, the pitfalls of the No Child Left Behind Act, and the downside of popular practices in over-scheduling. By the author of Branded. Reprint.

Hothouse Kids: How the Pressure to Succeed Threatens Childhood

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Penguin??Books

Branded (Virginia Tech Common Book Ed): The Buying and Selling of Teenagers

Basic Books

In Branded, Alissa Quart takes us to the dark side of marketing to teens, showing readers a disturbingly fast-paced world in which adults shamelessly insinuate themselves into "friendships" with young people in order to monitor what they wear, eat, listen to, and buy. We travel to a conference on advertising to teenagers and witness the breathless and insensitive pronouncements of lecturers there. We meet the unofficial teen "sales force" for a new girls' perfume (the unpaid daughters of the company's saleswomen) and observe the attempts of mega-corporations to purchase the time and space for product-placement in schools. We witness the aggressive and potentially emotionally damaging ways in which adults seek to control vulnerable young minds and wallets. But we also witness the bravery of isolated and increasingly Internet-linked kids who attempt to turn the tables on the cocksure corporations that so cynically strive to manipulate them.Eye-opening and urgent, Branded exposes and condemns a segment of American business whose high-paid job it is to reduce teens to their lowest common denominator, to systematically sap youth of individuality and creativity. Engaging and thought provoking, Branded ensures that consumers will never look at the American way of doing business in the same way again.In Branded, author Alissa Quart spotlights the most nefarious of youth marketing techniques, revealing eye-opening facts about the commercialization of today's teens, including:--31 million teens now spend upwards of 153 billion on leisure expenses- clothing, CDs, and makeup-a year. 55% of American high-school seniors work more than three hours a day to earn the money to fulfill their need for stuff.--A growing number of high schools are sponsored by corporations. Textbooks regularly mention Oreo cookies and math problems contain Nike logos. Teenagers not only play ball in gyms rimmed with logos but also spend their English classes coming up with advertising slogans for sponsors, all under the auspices of their so-called public schools.--In the last two years, cosmetic surgery rates for teens have gone from 1% to 3% of the total 4.6 million surgeries performed each year. Teen liposcution has doubled; breast augmentation has increased by almost a third in the last five years.

Branded: The Buying And Selling Of Teenagers

Teen & Young Adult

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