Promised Land: The Working Class Struggle for the American Dream

A personal, journalistic ethnography of the modern American working class, based on the travels and interactions of the author through the American heartland.

Second Class is the most important book you will read all year. A political realignment is coming, and its my hope that the end result will work in favor of our all-too-neglected American working class. When that realignment comes, Batya and her book will help lead the way.

Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind

Who is the American working class? Do they still have a fair shot at the American Dream? What do they think about their chances to secure the hallmarks of a middle-class life?

 While writing this book, Batya Ungar-Sargon visited states across the nation to speak with members of the American working-class fighting tooth and nail to survive. In Second Class, working-class Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations share their storiescleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious livesas well as what policies they think would improve them. Second Class combines deep reporting with a look at the data and expert opinion on Americas emergent class divide, in which the most basic elements of a secure and stable life are increasingly out of reach for those without a college education.

 America has broken its contract with its laboring class. So, how do we get back to the American Dream? How do we once again become the land of opportunity, the promised land where hard work and commitment to family are enough to protect you from poverty? Its not that hard actually. All it would take, as this book illustrates, is for those in power to once again respect the dignity of workand the American worker.