Poverty Memoir

The further adventures of "Dr. Gonzo" as he defends the "cucarachas" - the Chicanos of East Los Angeles. Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo" a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

Aged 15, Lorna was living on the streets of Soho, trying to avoid abuse and rape whilst battling an addiction to heroin. She worked as an escort and a stripper, lost custody of her daughter, and relapsed multiple times. But, somehow, and unlike most of the people imprisoned by the streets, Lorna didn't just survive but she flew.

In this riveting biography, author Bret Thoman accomplishes what few biographers have. He pierces the inner life of Francis, revealing his deepest passions, his unquenchable love for poverty, and his unshakable grip on the core of the Gospel. The life of Francis, so often festooned with spectacle and miracle, is in reality the story of a soul yearning for God in every moment and glimpsing his presence in all creation.

Professional distance runners Elvin Kibet and Shadrack Kipchirchir grew up in rural Kenyan villages. Though their lives began in poverty, both were driven to reach their full potential, to gain an education, and make a difference. And they would find their way to do just that through the high-pressure world of distance running.

A riveting work of literary journalism that explores the infamous police killing of Eric Garner - from the New York Times best-selling author of The Divide.

Jamie Mustard was born into one of the most influential fringe movements in the 1970s: Scientology. Raised on a mythos of spaceships and made to believe that it was his life’s purpose to help save the world, he was determined to survive—not only unsurvivable neglect but also the impossible physical and psychological gauntlet of extreme poverty and illiteracy. Child X is a dark existential journey into a deepest hole of human existence and the road back.

A Remarkable Yet Chilling Memoir of an Orphan from Africa From an orphan, environmental scientist and Fulbright Fellow comes a remarkable memoir of growing up in an unremarkable poor town in Zimbabwe that presents an alarming revelation of the oft ignored challenges of child-headed families in Africa. I Could Be Someone is an outstanding memoir on grace and grit, and the guts to forge an identity beyond the pain of being an orphan. At only nine, Edmond Sanganyado lost his father. By the time he turned 17, he had lost his mother and was taking care of his young brothers. I Could Be Someone ...

In 2008, Dave Bidini accompanies Homeless Team Canada to the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne, Australia. Home and Away offers a powerful look at the poor and dispossessed, from the barrios of Mexico City and the shanties of West Africa, to the streets of North America and Europe, and illuminates the renewed meaning that these homeless players find in the beautiful game.

Little Jeff Pearce grew up in a postwar Liverpool slum. His father lived the life of an affluent gentleman whilst his mother was forced to steal bread to feed her starving children. Life was tough, and from the moment Jeff could walk he learned to go door to door, begging rags from the rich, which he sold down the markets. Leaving school at the age of 14, he embarked on an extraordinary journey and found himself, before the age of 30, a millionaire. Then, after a cruel twist of fate left him penniless, he, his wife and his children were forced out of their beautiful home.

The first half of Chris Hughes's life played like a movie reel right out of the "American Dream". He grew up in a small town in North Carolina. His parents were people of modest means, but he was accepted into an elite boarding school and then Harvard, both on scholarship. There, he met Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz and became one of the co-founders of Facebook. In telling his story, Hughes demonstrates the powerful role fortune and luck play in today's economy. Through the rocket ship rise of Facebook, Hughes came to understand how a select few can become ultra-wealthy nearly overnight.

In the early 2000s, 13-year-old Katie Van Heidrich has moved more times that she can count, for as long as she can remember. There were the slow moves where you see the whole thing coming. There were the fast ones where you grab what you can in seconds. When Katie and her family come back from an out-of-town funeral, they discover their landlord has unceremoniously evicted them, forcing them to pack lightly and move quickly. They make their way to an Extended Stay America Motel. Within the four walls of their new home, Katie and her siblings, Josh and Haley, try to live a normal life.

Who Killed My Father rips into France’s long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French - at the minimum - of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely 50 years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: “You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death.” It’s as simple as that.

When asked if they'd rather receive aid or work, the world's poorest people will always choose work. But the world's richest countries continue to send aid, targeting the symptoms, not the causes of poverty. Western countries have the best intentions, but charity-based aid often does more harm than good, and billions of people continue to suffer. According to Leila Janah, giving dignified, steady, fair-wage work is the most effective way to eradicate poverty.

To Hell With Poverty! documents Jon's story from a south London slum and working-class background to international success as core musician, lyricist, writer, and producer in acclaimed post-punk/funk band, Gang of Four. Made up of charming vignettes, the listener is taken on an episodic journey full of raucous adventures from Jon's childhood and teenage years, to the height of Gang of Four's success in the seventies and eighties.

In the underground tunnels below Grand Central Terminal, Lee Stringer - homeless and drug-addicted for 11 years - found a pencil to run through his crack pipe. One day he used it to write. Soon writing became a habit that won out over drugs, and before long Stringer had created one of the most powerful urban memoirs of our time. With humane wisdom and a biting wit, Stringer chronicles the unraveling of his seemingly secure existence as a marketing executive and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York.

He was born the mixed-race son of a negligent, drug-dealing pimp father and a struggling single mother. He was raised in the slums of Dayton, Ohio, suffered incredible abuse and racism, and had multiple stints in the juvenile justice system. He barely graduated high school and has no college degree. No one expected him to succeed. But succeed he did. Gripping, heartbreaking, enlightening, and ultimately uplifting, I Got There proves that no obstacle is too difficult to conquer - and that the game can be won by anyone, from anywhere.

In this memoir about overcoming adversity in America, the US Senator responsible for creating "opportunity zones" explains how hard work and community growth can drive businesses and end poverty. In Opportunity Knocks, Senator Scott will tell his life story with a focus on adversity and opportunity. He will teach listeners about the principles of hard work and hope while addressing the dangers of veering too far toward socialist policies.

Two days after his eighteenth birthday, Kenny Imafidon was charged with the murder of a seventeen-year-old boy in south-east London. The middle child of a single mother with ambitions for her children, Kenny grew up near an estate in Peckham where deprivation and hopelessness were rife, and gang culture flourished in his community. Kenny faced a minimum of thirty years behind bars. A candid and unfiltered take on some of the most challenging topics that define our times, That Peckham Boy is a personal manifesto exploring what it means to be young, Black and poor in the city.

My name is Hazel Lamb…Lindsey, but my momma called me Fireball. I am 84 years old. I only got one year of schooling, but I am self-taught. I worked hard all my life.

The unforgettable inspiring memoir of one extraordinary doctor who is saving lives in a most unconventional way, Ask Me Why I Hurt is the touching and revealing first-person account of the remarkable work of Dr. Randy Christensen. Trained as a pediatrician, he works not in a typical hospital setting but, rather, in a 38-foot Winnebago that has been refitted as a doctor's office on wheels. His patients are the city's homeless adolescents and children.