The Biblio File

Stephen Pimpare spoke at Fairfield yesterday, outlining the ideas in his new book A People’s History of Poverty in America, part of the Howard Zinn People’s History series from New Press. He framed his argument around a quote by Edith Wharton which, of course, I didn’t write down and which, of course, I now can’t find. But the gist of it was that the only way that the middle and upper classes will ever know the practical aspects of being poor is with an extraordinary imagination. You have to like it when a political scientist starts a conversation about economics with a Wharton quote. He went on to suggest that, historically, the major problem with analyses of poverty in the U.S. have focused on moments of policy intervention, and on the policies themselves, rather than on how the actual condition–the day to day lives–of the poor have changed. Or, rather, how they haven’t. Worth checking out.