NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A profound book.... It will break your heart but also leave you with hope." —J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy "[A] deeply empathetic book." —The Economist With stark photo essays and unforgettable true stories, Chris Arnade cuts through "expert" pontification on inequality, addiction, and poverty to allow those who have been left behind to define themselves on their own terms. After abandoning his Wall Street career, Chris Arnade decided to document poverty and addiction in the Bronx. He began interviewing, photographing, and becoming close friends with homeless addicts, and spent hours in drug dens and McDonald's. Then he started driving across America to see how the rest of the country compared. He found the same types of stories everywhere, across lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and geography. The people he got to know, from Alabama and California to Maine and Nevada, gave Arnade a new respect for the dignity and resilience of what he calls America's Back Row--those who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class. The strivers in the Front Row, with their advanced degrees and upward mobility, see the Back Row's values as worthless. They scorn anyone who stays in a dying town or city as foolish, and mock anyone who clings to religion or tradition as naïve. As Takeesha, a woman in the Bronx, told Arnade, she wants to be seen she sees herself: "a prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God." This book is his attempt to help the rest of us truly see, hear, and respect millions of people who've been left behind.

A noted conflict-resolution expert explores dignity, its role in human conflict, and its power to improve relationships Drawing on her extensive experience in international conflict resolution and on insights from evolutionary biology, psychology, and neuroscience, Donna Hicks explains what the elements of dignity are, how to recognize dignity violations, how to respond when we are not treated with dignity, how dignity can restore a broken relationship, why leaders must understand the concept of dignity, and more. By choosing dignity as a way of life, Hicks shows, we open the way to greater peace within ourselves and to a safer and more humane world for all. For the Tenth Anniversary Edition of Dignity, Hicks has written a new preface that reflects on her experience helping communities and individuals understand the power of dignity and how it can lead to a more peaceful world. "Anyone who understands the importance of personal feelings and their fuel for conflict should consider Dignity as a powerful advisory and motivational guide."--Midwest Book Review Winner of the 2012 Educator's Award, given by the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International.

Death is inevitable. But bad deaths-- accompanied by unnecessarily prolonged pain and suffering, often aggravated by immensely costly and frequently futile medical treatments-- can be avoided. This book offers clear and valuable examples of how, through frank communication with caregivers and loved ones and the use of Advance Medical Directives such as living wills, those who are facing the possibility of death in the foreseeable future, and those who help them cope, can greatly minimize or eliminate end-of-life turmoil, family dissension, and pain.

Randy, Obediah, and Barney all endured humiliation and degradation in different parts of two continents, as they spend many years trying to rid themselves of their feelings of shame they had borne in their past. All three of the men are married to women of integrity whose selfless encouragement enlivens them to find a way to live a life of dignity. Destiny intervenes and brings them together as they all seek a common shelter from a South Dakota blizzard. Each of the three men find themselves willing to discuss with total strangers, as they wait for the terrible blizzard to end, their hopes, ambitions, goals and loves as each receives motivation and inspiration from the others. Many people feel these men would have surely been signers of Our Declaration of Independence or of the American Constitution if they had only been at the right place at the right time. Instead they were a catalyst to building a new society and culture in a developing country which needed honesty, integrity, and love of liberty for a basis of living.

A Defense of Dignity argues that all human beings should be treated with respect and considers how this belief should be applied in controversial cases.

Everything we hold sacred—morality, ethics, self-respect, truth, fairness, justice, equality, progress and dignity—stands violated in the presence of widespread poverty and deprivation. Why is it that our brilliant inventors, brightest entrepreneurs, cleverest businessmen, and most savvy political leaders, who can successfully build inexpensive rockets to take us to space and construct lengthy bridges across dangerous rivers, cannot eliminate poverty in their neighborhoods? Unless, of course, poverty is an acceptable byproduct of our economic progress. But this book is not about poverty. It is about dignity. It is about the deceptively simple idea that a basic income that enables payment of essential needs such as food, shelter, and decent clothing can eliminate the stigma of targeted welfare and restore dignity to people impoverished by the damaging consequences of an unfair social, economic and political system. It is about constructing a newer, more equitable and happier society. This book makes the case that every citizen over the age of 18 deserves a monthly living allowance to pay for basic needs - such as food, shelter, and decent clothing, not as a matter of charity but as a legitimate share of the national wealth, they help create.

This publication fills a unique gap in the theological and religious engagement with the issue of human disability in South Africa. Combining the contributions of scholars, practitioners and people living with disabilities, it stands out for the way in which it promotes an interdisciplinary debate on disability and human dignity from a theological point of departure and interest. The end result is a collective effort with a critical approach to the role of religion (and the Christian faith tradition in particular) in the social and life worlds of people living with disabilities. A forceful argument is thus constructed about ways in which religion and the Christian faith tradition should change their own discourses, practices and ideological presuppositions regarding the issue of human disability. - Cobus van Wyngaard, Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology, University of South Africa