{"product_id":"9781465326386","title":"Another Sort of Life: A Professor's Life Among the Downwardly Mobile,the New Poor, and the Underclass of the Troubled 1980s","description":"Spurred by boredom and maybe a touch of mid-life crisis, a political science professor quits the security of academic life and with just the cash in his pocket, a worn-out station wagon and a cargo of books hits the road in search of something – different.\u003cp\u003e  economy and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. His new colleagues include ne’er-do-wells, zanies, bohemians, underachievers, and people temporarily or permanently “down on their luck.” He joins the “new poor” – an unprecedented class of downwardly mobile people for whom university degrees, diligence, and doing “everything right” have lost their force – and he becomes himself a misfit who can’t, or won’t, hang onto a job. During his travels he makes a catch-as-catch-can living as an adjunct professor, a field worker, a department store clerk, a civil servant, a door-to-door salesman, a janitor, a car washer, a day laborer, even a seller of blood – his own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e  This is a close-up view of the dark (and now largely neglected) side of the 1980s, also of a subculture which lives just below the surface of middle-class American life and which shares neither in its affluence nor its aspirations. It’s a fouryear stroll on the wrong side of the tracks, a tale reminiscent of George Orwell’s \u003ci\u003eDown and Out in Paris and London,\u003c\/i\u003e yet leavened with a dash of humor.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Xlibris Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47125725577456,"sku":"9781465326386","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781465326386_p0.jpg?v=1763683418","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781465326386","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}