An unsparing, incisive, yet ultimately hopeful look at how we can shed the American obsession with self-reliance that has made us less healthy, less secure, and less fulfilled The 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 eventually succeed. However, time and again we have seen how 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 heart of our suffering is a do-it-yourself ethos, the misplaced belief in our own independence and the conviction that we must rely on ourselves alone. Looking at a range of delusions and half solutions--from "grit" to the false Horatio Alger story to the rise of GoFundMe--Quart reveals how we have been 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 the social safety net we so desperately need. Insightful, sharply argued, and characterized by Quart's lively writing and deep reporting, and for fans of Evicted and Nickel and Dimed, Bootstrapped is a powerful examination of what ails us at a societal level and a plan for how we can free ourselves from these self-defeating narratives.

A collection of compelling, hard-hitting essays, documentary poems, and photographs that together expose our punitive social systems from the ground up. Going for Broke, edited by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and David Wallis, EHRP’s Managing Director, gives voice to a range of gifted writers who know what it means to live on the edge. These are journalists for whom “economic precarity� is more than just another assignment. One essayist and grocery store worker describes what it is like to be an “essential worker� during the pandemic; another reporter and military veteran details his experience with homelessness and what would have actually helped him at the time. These dozens of fierce and sometimes darkly funny pieces reflect the larger systems that have made writers' bodily experiences, family and home lives, and work far harder than they ought to be. All illustrate what the late Barbara Ehrenreich, who conceived of EHRP, once described as “the real face of journalism today: not million dollar-a-year anchorpersons, but low-wage workers and downwardly spiraling professionals.� Going for Broke champions these writers and rejects the common understanding that those who opine about inequality should come from the top of the income ladder. Featuring introductions by a stellar line-up, including Camonghne Felix, Michelle Tea, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Kathi Weeks, and Astra Taylor, Going for Broke is eye-opening and moving, as well as instructive of the steps we can take to change the stalemate we find ourselves in today.

A collection of compelling, hard-hitting essays, documentary poems, and photographs that together expose our punitive social systems from the ground up. Going for Broke, edited by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and David Wallis, EHRP’s Managing Director, gives voice to a range of gifted writers who know what it means to live on the edge. These are journalists for whom “economic precarity� is more than just another assignment. One essayist and grocery store worker describes what it is like to be an “essential worker� during the pandemic; another reporter and military veteran details his experience with homelessness and what would have actually helped him at the time. These dozens of fierce and sometimes darkly funny pieces reflect the larger systems that have made writers' bodily experiences, family and home lives, and work far harder than they ought to be. All illustrate what the late Barbara Ehrenreich, who conceived of EHRP, once described as “the real face of journalism today: not million dollar-a-year anchorpersons, but low-wage workers and downwardly spiraling professionals.� Going for Broke champions these writers and rejects the common understanding that those who opine about inequality should come from the top of the income ladder. Featuring introductions by a stellar line-up, including Camonghne Felix, Michelle Tea, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Kathi Weeks, and Astra Taylor, Going for Broke is eye-opening and moving, as well as instructive of the steps we can take to change the stalemate we find ourselves in today.

Generation Y has grown up in an age of the brand, bombarded by name products. In Branded, Alissa Quart illuminates the unsettling new reality of marketing to teenagers, as well as the quieter but no less worrisome forms of teen branding: the teen consultants who work for corporations in exchange for product; the girls obsessed with cosmetic surgery who will do anything to look like women on TV; and those teens simply obsessed with admission into a name-brand college. We also meet the pockets of kids attempting to turn the tables on the cocksure corporations that so cynically strive to manipulate them. Chilling, thought-provoking, even darkly amusing, Branded brings one of the most disturbing and least talked about results of contemporary business and culture to the fore-and ensures that we will never look at today's youth the same way again.