Akron Public Library

"Fifty years after Michael Harrington published his ... book The other America, in which he chronicled the lives of people excluded from the Age of Affluence, poverty in America is back with a vengeance. It is made up of both the long-term chronically poor and new working poor--the tens of millions of victims of a broken economy and an ever more dysfunctional political system. In many ways, for the majority of Americans, financial insecurity has become...

Amazing Grace is a book about the hearts of children who grow up in the South Bronx - the poorest congressional district of our nation. Without rhetoric, but drawing extensively upon the words of children, parents, and priests, this book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live test positive for HIV. Pediatric AIDS, life-consuming fires,...

When the Beenes, a family so poor that they have nothing but watery soup for their Christmas dinner, share their food with a homeless woman and child, they are all transformed by the selfless act.

Warren takes you on a journey into the workhouses, slums, factories, and schools of Victorian England, and into the world of Dickens. She shows now he used his pen to do battle on behalf of the poor, becoming one of the great reformers of his or any age.

Kozol returns to the scene of his prize-winning books Rachel and her children and Amazing Grace, and to the children he's portrayed there, to share their journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood.

"Originally published in Paris in 1925, My First Thirty Years is a brutally honest memoir by Gertrude Beasley, who grew up in poverty in rural Texas and suffered unthinkable emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her family. The themes in this book are still relevant to readers today, telling the story of a woman who grew up in brutal circumstances, but who ultimately found a way out. Beasley's memoir is one of the most raw coming-of-age historical...

Minni lives in the poorest part of Mumbai, where access to water is limited to a few hours a day and the communal taps have long lines. Lately, though, even that access is being threatened by severe water shortages and thieves, who steal this precious commodity--an act Minni accidentally witnesses one night. Meanwhile, in the high-rise building where she started to work, water streams out of every faucet; there's even a rooftop swimming pool! Minni...

Tells the story of a princess and a pauper who were worlds apart in lifestyles, yet identical in looks. When chance brings them together, it becomes the beginning of a great adventure and a friendship that will last a lifetieme. When Anneliese is captured, Erika must pretend to be the princess to help find out what has happened and to save the real princess. In the end, the magic of love and friendship triumphs and the kingdom is saved.

A portrait of Mother Angelica describes the influential nun's youth, her dedication to a cloistered order of Franciscan nuns, and her creation of the powerful, multimillion-dollar Eternal World Television Network.