Social Classes

Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he...

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...

What has become of the English working class in the twenty-first century? After a decades-long absence, class is once again central to our understanding of ailing Britain. But what does it mean to be working class today? As Jonas Patrick Marvin shows, questions of class have often been replaced by...

With anger and compassion, Roy exposes the sordid underbelly and dark inhumanity of capitalism in India and around the globe. From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of...

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including...

Arundhati Roy examines the persistent inequality in India through an extensive critique of Gandhi's views on race, caste and imperialism. To best understand and address the inequality in India today, Arundhati Roy insists we must examine both the political development and influence of M. K. Gandhi...

Revolutions is a sparkling account of political upheaval and the power of history. We think of revolutions in terms of fleeting events, such as the fall of the Bastille or the storming of the Winter Palace. In reality, they take decades to burn out, if they ever do. Historian Donald Sassoon takes...