Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America
Written by Alissa Quart
Narrated by Carly Robins
4/5
()
About this audiobook
“Brilliant—a keen, elegantly written, and scorching account of the American family today. Through vivid stories, sharp analysis and wit, Quart anatomizes the middle class’s fall while also offering solutions and hope.”
— Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed
Families today are squeezed on every side—from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours. Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible.
Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects—from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses—have been wrung out by a system that doesn’t support them, and enriches only a tiny elite.
Interlacing her own experience with close-up reporting on families that are just getting by, Quart reveals parenthood itself to be financially overwhelming, except for the wealthiest. She offers real solutions to these problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood and caregiving.
Written in the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich and Jennifer Senior, Squeezed is an eye-opening audiobook. Powerfully argued, deeply reported, and ultimately hopeful, it casts a bright, clarifying light on families struggling to thrive in an economy that holds too few options. It will make listeners think differently about their lives and those of their neighbors.
Alissa Quart
Alissa Quart is the author of four previous books of nonfiction, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America and Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, and two books of poetry, most recently Thoughts and Prayers. She is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and has written for many publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Time. Her honors include an Emmy Award, an SPJ Award, and Nieman Fellowship. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Related to Squeezed
Related audiobooks
Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We're Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Greedy Bastards: Corporate Communists, Banksters, and the Other Vampires Who Suck America Dry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.-How the Working Poor Became Big Business Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing Systems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Harvest the Vote: How Democrats Can Win Again in Rural America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Social Science For You
Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lonely Dad Conversations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hate U Give Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kindred Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Radiolab: Journey Through The Human Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of Achilles: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radiolab: Mixtape: How The Cassette Changed The World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Left Hand of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Cute When You're Mad: Simple Steps for Confronting Sexism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Squeezed
29 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I wanted to like this book, however the deeper I got the more I realized the facts presented were not fully researched and the opinions were bias towards a leftist agenda. Would not recommend and check the facts, not fully accurate
1 person found this helpful