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Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line
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Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams
In Limbo, award-winning journalist Alfred Lubrano identifies and describes an overlooked cultural phenomenon: the internal conflict within individuals raised in blue-collar homes, now living white-collar lives. These people often find that the values of the working class are not sufficient guidance to navigate the white-collar world, where unspoken rules reflect primarily upper-class values. Torn between the world they were raised in and the life they aspire too, they hover between worlds, not quite accepted in either. Himself the son of a Brooklyn bricklayer, Lubrano informs his account with personal experience and interviews with other professionals living in limbo. For millions of Americans, these stories will serve as familiar reminders of the struggles of achieving the American Dream..
Price: $11.01
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The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker
As did the national bestseller Nickel and Dimed, Mike Rose’s revelatory book demolishes the long-held notion that people who work with their hands make up a less intelligent class. He shows us waitresses making lightning-fast calculations, carpenters handling complex spatial mathematics, and hairdressers, plumbers, and electricians with their aesthetic and diagnostic acumen. Rose, an educator who is himself the son of a waitress, explores the intellectual repertory of everyday workers and the terrible social cost of undervaluing the work they do. Deftly combining research, interviews, and personal history, this is one of those rare books that has the capacity both to shape public policy and to illuminate general readers..
Price: $2.70
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Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-Collar Jobs (George Gund Foundation Book in African American Studies)
From the time of Booker T. Washington to today, and William Julius Wilson, the advice dispensed to young black men has invariably been, "Get a trade." Deirdre Royster has put this folk wisdom to an empirical test--and, in Race and the Invisible Hand, exposes the subtleties and discrepancies of a workplace that favors the white job-seeker over the black. At the heart of this study is the question: Is there something about young black men that makes them less desirable as workers than their white peers? And if not, then why do black men trail white men in earnings and employment rates? Royster seeks an answer in the experiences of 25 black and 25 white men who graduated from the same vocational school and sought jobs in the same blue-collar labor market in the early 1990s. After seriously examining the educational performances, work ethics, and values of the black men for unique deficiencies, her study reveals the greatest difference between young black and white men--access to the kinds of contacts that really help in the job search and entry process..
Price: $20.64
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Men at Work (Berkley Sensation)
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Blue Collar God / White Collar God
The truth is simple but the perspective is revolutionary Terry Esau tells stories of a God who became regular, approachable, and accessible- not because He had to- but because He wanted to. Imagine God as a cab driver, a garbage man, or an insurance salesman- these are the stories of a God who went to great lengths to erase the distance, close the gap, and become one of us so we would truly know the extent of His love for us. But turn the book over and meet the White Collar God: the galactic CEO, the big I Am, the artist extraordinaire. In this book, we see both sides of the Creator-transcendent, yet accessible. .
Price: $0.97
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The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration (Russell Sage Foundation Books at Harvard University Press)
Michèle Lamont takes us into the world inhabited by working-class men--the world as they understand it. Interviewing black and white working-class men who, because they are not college graduates, have limited access to high-paying jobs and other social benefits, she constructs a revealing portrait of how they see themselves and the rest of society. Morality is at the center of these workers' worlds. They find their identity and self-worth in their ability to discipline themselves and conduct responsible but caring lives. These moral standards function as an alternative to economic definitions of success, offering them a way to maintain dignity in an out-of-reach American dreamland. But these standards also enable them to draw class boundaries toward the poor and, to a lesser extent, the upper half. Workers also draw rigid racial boundaries, with white workers placing emphasis on the "disciplined self" and blacks on the "caring self." Whites thereby often construe blacks as morally inferior because they are lazy, while blacks depict whites as domineering, uncaring, and overly disciplined. This book also opens up a wider perspective by examining American workers in comparison with French workers, who take the poor as "part of us" and are far less critical of blacks than they are of upper-middle-class people and immigrants. By singling out different "moral offenders" in the two societies, workers reveal contrasting definitions of "cultural membership" that help us understand and challenge the forms of inequality found in both societies. (20010401).
Price: $21.31
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Hard Living on Clay Street: Portraits of Blue Collar Families
In this revealing study of a white working class neighborhood in Washington, D.C., Howell shows us that there is more than one kind of blue collar worker in America today. Hard Living on Clay Street is about two very different blue collar families, the Shackelfords and the Mosebys. They are fiercely independent southern migrants, preoccupied with the problems of day- to-day living, drinking heavily, and often involved in unstable family relationships. Howell moved to Clay Street for a year with his wife and son and became deeply involved with the people, recording their story. As readers, we too become participants in the life of Clay Street, and not just observers, learning what "living on Clay Street" is all about..
Price: $22.60
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Just a Guy: Notes from a Blue Collar Life
What does it mean to be JUST A GUY? --A guy doesn’t think before he speaks. --Eating and sleeping always come first. Always.--A guy may get married, but he doesn’t have to like it. --It’s tough to admit, but all guys are exactly the same. Blue Collar Comedy Star Bill Engvall is JUST A GUY. He’s been one his whole life. He can’t help it. He was born that way. And that makes him an expert on the subject.
For the record, here’s the official definition of a guy: A person who doesn’t think before he speaks. He can’t. He’s not that deep. Because a guy has only three basic needs: eating, sleeping, and sex. That’s it. JUST A GUY chronicles a lifetime in pursuit of those needs.
In this hilarious and heartfelt memoir, Bill Engvall takes you on the rollicking ride of his life, beginning with his childhood in Texas and adolescence in Arizona, becoming a fixture in local emergency rooms, the result of massive amounts of non-thinking behavior trying to impress girls or torture his sisters; to high school in Dallas where he dabbled in an array of truly odd jobs, learned the trombone, and came of age, all strangely connected; to college and his tenure as his fraternity’s social chairman, where he masterminded a series of legendary parties and attempted to rescue his pet bird while the house was burning down (not his fault, honest); to following his dream as a standup comic and, gulp, singer; to his brief stint in children’s theater while sharing the stage and the back of a van with the director’s dog, and as a movie extra with forked tongue and cloth claws; to his bumbling and riotous courtship, then marriage to Gail, the love of his life; and, finally, fatherhood, where he remains, to this day, a well-meaning, but flawed parent.
Through it all, Bill gamely stumbles along, struggling to maintain a façade of confidence and control. Far from a superhero, Bill Engvall is an everyday Everyman, the poster boy for normal. The result is JUST A GUY who is disarming, perceptive, wildly funny, and unexpectedly moving.
JUST A GUY will make you laugh out loud and tug at your heart.
Hopefully, not at the same time. .
Price: $1.99
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