New Book: Breadline USA

Posted by on June 22, 2009

New Book Exposes Growing Crisis of American Hunger
35 Million Americans Without Proper Access to Food

In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, investigative journalist and Demos Senior Fellow Sasha Abramsky exposes the untold story of America’s hunger crisis in his new book, BreadlineUSA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It (PoliPoint, June 2009).

Written as part first-person account and part in-depth reportage, Abramsky combines extensive research, interviews with American families who rely on food pantries to stave off hunger and malnutrition, and his own personal hunger journey to illuminate how nearly 35 million Americans can go hungry everyday.

The author documents the stories of the elderly, the middle-aged, and the young–from the inner city to rural America–to show how today’s frayed social safety nets, rising unemployment, gas prices and soaring health and housing costs have driven families to choose between putting food on the table or paying off medical bills and paying rent.

In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich, Abramsky also uses his personal experiment with hunger to better illustrate the conditions that he witnessed in his writing of the book. He chronicles the near-impossible financial balancing act required to secure enough food to survive, and vividly details the psychological and physical impact of hunger, interweaving his observations and feelings throughout the book.

Abramsky also provides a political and economic analysis of public policies that have directly contributed to America’s hunger epidemic. He draws startling comparisons between today’s crisis with the shantytown, “Hooverville” days of the Great Depression. He addresses the severe inequities originating from the “trickle-up effect” of the Reagan years, when inadequate government aid programs left countless families behind. He takes issue with the “constricted” government definitions of poverty and a federal measurement rooted in 1950s living standards; states’ food stamp programs that fail to cover one-in-three (or 10 million individuals) of those who are poor enough to qualify; and labor practices by big-box retailers and industrial corporations that depress wages, restrict benefits and squander hard-earned pensions and savings for millions of Americans.