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Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression Paperback – Illustrated, May 14, 2013
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In Someplace Like America, writer Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael S. Williamson take us to the working-class heart of America, bringing to life—through shoe leather reporting, memoir, vivid stories, stunning photographs, and thoughtful analysis—the deepening crises of poverty and homelessness. The story begins in 1980, when the authors joined forces to cover the America being ignored by the mainstream media—people living on the margins and losing their jobs as a result of deindustrialization. Since then, Maharidge and Williamson have traveled more than half a million miles to investigate the state of the working class (winning a Pulitzer Prize in the process). In Someplace Like America, they follow the lives of several families over the thirty-year span to present an intimate and devastating portrait of workers going jobless. This brilliant and essential study—begun in the trickle-down Reagan years and culminating with the recent banking catastrophe—puts a human face on today’s grim economic numbers. It also illuminates the courage and resolve with which the next generation faces the future.
- Length
276
Pages
- Language
EN
English
- PublisherUniversity of California Press
- Publication date
2013
May 14
- Dimensions
7.0 x 1.1 x 9.0
inches
- ISBN-100520274512
- ISBN-13978-0520274518
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Pulitzer Prize–winning author and photographer team Maharidge and Williamson continue their heartfelt chronicle of the travails facing America's poor and homeless . . . Presenting new stories from today's ‘Great Depression’ and updating their accounts of those impoverished during the recession of the '80s and the supposed boom years of the '90s, this book evokes the Depression-era collaboration of Walker Evans and James Agee.” ― Publishers Weekly
"The strength of Someplace Like America is Maharidge's ability to tell the story of the down and out, a story made all the more real by the photographs of Michael Williamson. Yes, perhaps sociologists could learn to humanize our subjects, especially in quantitative accounts of inequality . . . Instead, the real challenge is to understand why we have not witnessed a broad-based class mobilization to challenge the massive growth in inequality in America that Maharidge and Williamson so deftly document in this book." ― Contemporary Sociology
“The really wonderful thing about the book is that it's not just a cavalcade of ruin porn—it's very honest about the hardships that the working poor face on a daily basis, but it shines as bright a light on the resilience that Maharidge ultimately hopes will be everyone's salvation. You'll meet some really interesting people, and get to experience what is really a legitimate journalistic adventure. . . . It comes with a huge clutch of Michael Williamson's excellent photojournalism as well.” ― Huffington Post
“The evening (and morning and 24 hour) news spends a great deal of time on the American economy, but watching well dressed and perfectly groomed anchors talk about statistics, show political sound bites, and interview down on their luck families just isn’t the same as reading Dale Maharidge’s words or looking at Michael S. Williamson’s photographs." ― PopMatters
“Deserves high praise . . . . Undeniable relevance to today’s American experience.” ― Foreword Reviews
“Through powerful essays and haunting photographs we experience how typical middle class Americans have endured job loss, poverty and homelessness.” ― Dayton Daily News
“Written in the grand tradition of the early 20th-century muckrakers—Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker—this is a book that occasionally confounds as it shifts from decade to decade, story to story, but which drives home its central theme that America has lost its way. Maharidge 's straightforward-but-impassioned prose and Williamson's gritty black-and-white photographs make you angry. They're an indictment.” ― American Studies
"Future journalists and citizen bloggers should study this book for its craft. . . . It's full of hard-core examples of the kind of reporting that defeats stereotypes and challenges the status quo. . . . Williamson's black-and-white photos also tell powerful stories. . . . They are breathtaking in scope and detail." ― New Labor Forum
“Maharidge and Williamson deliver a heart-wrenching and thought-provoking work. . . . Williamson’s stunning black-and-white photographs span three decades and capture pockets of a crumbling America that few have witnessed. He and Maharidge give a much-needed voice to the people who continue to fall through the cracks―people who want neither your pity nor your politics as they fight to survive and to regain a sense of pride in themselves and in their nation.” ― Santa Fe New Mexican
From the Inside Flap
George Packer, The New Yorker
These boys saw the floorboards giving out while the rest of America danced in the pig and whistle. Maharidge and Williamson have a document here that may be even more important in a generation than it is today.Charlie LeDuff, author of Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts
Through the voices and stories of working-class people, Maharidge and Williamson provide insight into the current situation, reminding us of the history of economic struggle and the importance of understanding our culture from the bottom up. John Russo, co-author of Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown
This is a deeply felt and beautifully crafted book. Maharidge and Williamson are brave and clear-eyed in chronicling the struggle of Americas workers. Todd DePastino, author of Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America
"In this moving and urgent book, Maharidge and Williamson continue to dig through the social wreckage of three decades of economic plunder, courageously documenting the uprooted and displaced, the uncertain and the fearful. Someplace Like America peers into the dark heart of a society that has turned its back on working people--and that may be on the cusp of abandoning its dignity as well. In the smoldering occupational ruins of what once was, Maharidge also manages to find hopeful embers of what might one day be. A disturbing retrospective on twenty-five years of reporting on the long-term dissolution of the American dream." Jefferson Cowie, Cornell University, author of Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
From the Back Cover
“Through the voices and stories of working-class people, Maharidge and Williamson provide insight into the current situation, reminding us of the history of economic struggle and the importance of understanding our culture from the bottom up.”—John Russo, co-author of Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown
“This is a deeply felt and beautifully crafted book. Maharidge and Williamson are brave and clear-eyed in chronicling the struggle of America’s workers.”—Todd DePastino, author of Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America
"In this moving and urgent book, Maharidge and Williamson continue to dig through the social wreckage of three decades of economic plunder, courageously documenting the uprooted and displaced, the uncertain and the fearful. Someplace Like America peers into the dark heart of a society that has turned its back on working people--and that may be on the cusp of abandoning its dignity as well. In the smoldering occupational ruins of what once was, Maharidge also manages to find hopeful embers of what might one day be. A disturbing retrospective on twenty-five years of reporting on the long-term dissolution of the American dream."—Jefferson Cowie, Cornell University, author of Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : University of California Press; First Edition, Updated Edition with a New Preface and Afterword (May 14, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 276 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0520274512
- ISBN-13 : 978-0520274518
- Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 1.1 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,581,293 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,872 in Poverty
- #11,518 in Discrimination & Racism
- #16,828 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the authors
My new book is "Somelace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression," with writer Dale Maharidge. Bruce Springsteen has written a foreword.
Someplace Like America will have three major sections of photographs, 81 total images. Many were taken over the past 30 years as Dale and I documented American workers who sometimes end up homeless. Other images were taken during my travels as a staff photographer at the Washington Post.
For more information, go to Facebook, where Dale has created a page. Type in "Someplace Like America: The book." If you don't have a Facebook acount, type that title in Google and add "Facebook" and the page will come up.
The book will be published by the University of California Press in May.
This account is being "built" by Amazon. Once I am able, I'll add some of my other missing books, such as "Homeland" with Dale.
"Fucked at Birth" is my 12th book. The title is not gratuitous--it comes from a graffito spray-painted inside the gas station on the cover of the book. I set off on a quest to ask a wide range of Americans what the flag on the outside of the service station and the writing inside meant to them. I drove across America, from California to New York City amid the height of the pandemic. Homeless camps in California. The Navajo Nation, BLM in Denver, meat packing towns in Nebraska and Iowa, Youngstown.
Before this I released "Snowden's Box" with Jessica Bruder, about my heretofore secret role in the Edward Snowden leak.
"The Dead Drink First" is my first Audible Original. But it's not a spoken book. It's a podcast about my 18-year-quest to bring my dad's missing WWII buddy home. He was buried near my father at Arlington National Cemetery in 2018. The Dead Drink First is based on dozens of hours of audio I recorded over the years, along with new audio. This podcast is a spinoff of my book "Bringing Mulligan Home/The Long Search for a Lost Marine," which was reissued this year by PublicAffairs with a new 9,000-word section of material. The podcast and book are different experiences for listeners/readers. Kind of like cousins. I hope people enjoy both.
The paperback of "Someplace Like America / Tales from the New Great Depression" came out in 2013, with photographs by Michael S. Williamson. Bruce Springsteen wrote a foreword. This book is about our 30 years of covering workers. We bring the story up to the present grim time for so many millions of Americans. We update the stories of the homeless we found back in the 1980s and found out how they are doing today.
In 1990 I won the non-fiction Pulitzer Prize for a book I did with Michael. "And Their Children After Them" followed the fates of the sharecroppers documented by James Agee and Walker Evans in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." A new edition will be published on the 30th anniversary of the Pulitzer by Seven Stories Press in early 2020, with 7,000 new words of update, and a surprise for readers.
I have several Facebook pages. The author one: Go to Facebook and type in "Dale Dimitro Maharidge." Others: "Someplace Like America: The Book" and "Bringing Mulligan Home." If you are not a Facebook member, you can still view the pages typing in the titles, plus "Facebook", in Google.
Dale Maharidge - Winter 2021
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Difficult reading throughout, but a book that I will give to members of my family and friends.