{"product_id":"9780814724309","title":"Class Unknown: Undercover Investigations of American Work and Poverty from the Progressive Era to the Present","description":"Since the Gilded Age, social scientists, middle-class reformers, and writers have left the comforts of their offices to \"pass\" as steel workers, coal miners, assembly-line laborers, waitresses, hoboes, and other working and poor people in an attempt to gain a fuller and more authentic understanding of the lives of the working class and the poor. In this first, sweeping study of undercover investigations of work and poverty in America, award-winning historian Mark Pittenger examines how intellectuals were shaped by their experiences with the poor, and how despite their sympathy toward working-class people, they unintentionally helped to develop the contemporary concept of a degraded and \"other\" American underclass. While contributing to our understanding of the history of American social thought, \u003cem\u003eClass Unknown \u003c\/em\u003eoffers a new perspective on contemporary debates over how we understand and represent our own society and its class divisions.","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47118697595120,"sku":"9780814724309","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780814724309_p0.jpg?v=1769909072","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780814724309","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}