
Dirty Work
Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $17.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Neil Shah
-
By:
-
Eyal Press
About this listen
Drone pilots who carry out targeted assassinations. Undocumented immigrants who man the "kill floors" of industrial slaughterhouses. Guards who patrol the wards of America's most violent and abusive prisons. In Dirty Work, Eyal Press offers a paradigm-shifting view of the moral landscape of contemporary America through the stories of people who perform society's most ethically troubling jobs. As Press shows, we are increasingly shielded and distanced from an array of morally questionable activities that other, less privileged people perform in our name.
The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn unprecedented attention to the issue of "essential workers" and to the health and safety risks to which workers in prisons and slaughterhouses are exposed. But Dirty Work examines another, less familiar set of occupational hazards: psychological and emotional hardships such as stigma, shame, PTSD, and moral injury. These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income workers, undocumented immigrants, women, and people of color.
Illuminating the moving, at times harrowing stories of the people doing society's dirty work, and incisively examining the structures of power and complicity that shape their lives, Press reveals fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work, and the hidden costs of inequality in America.
©2021 Eyal Press (P)2021 KaloramaListeners also enjoyed...
-
If I Betray These Words
- Moral Injury in Medicine and Why It's So Hard for Clinicians to Put Patients First
- By: Wendy Dean, Simon Talbot
- Narrated by: Wendy Dean
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Offering examples of how to make medicine better for the healers and those they serve, If I Betray These Words profiles clinicians across the country who are tough, resourceful, and resilient, but feel trapped between the patient-first values of their Hippocratic oath and the business imperatives of a broken healthcare system. If I Betray These Words confronts the threat and broken promises of moral injury—what it is; where it comes from; how it manifests; and who’s fighting back against it. We need better healthcare—for patients and for the workforce. It’s time to act.
-
-
Dust bowl
- By Doc on 04-12-23
By: Wendy Dean, and others
-
Poverty, by America
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
-
-
A testimonial based on facts and witness
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-27-23
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Broke in America
- Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty
- By: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Colleen Shaddox, Bomani Jones - foreword
- Narrated by: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Colleen Shaddox, JD Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nearly 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line - about $26,200 for a family of four. Low-income families and individuals are everywhere, from cities to rural communities. While poverty is commonly seen as a personal failure, or a deficiency of character or knowledge, it's actually the result of bad policy. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped - not because we lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to.
-
-
very left leaning
- By Bert Sloan on 09-06-22
By: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, and others
-
Halfway Home
- Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
- By: Reuben Jonathan Miller
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths.
-
-
Halfway to Nowhere
- By William on 04-19-21
-
Beautiful Souls
- Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
- By: Eyal Press
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the Swiss border with Austria in 1938, a police captain refuses to enforce a law barring Jewish refugees from entering his country. In the Balkans half a century later, a Serb from the war-blasted city of Vukovar defies his superiors in order to save the lives of Croats. At the height of the Second Intifada, a member of Israel's most elite military unit informs his commander he doesn't want to serve in the occupied territories.
Beautiful Souls explores the flipside of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention.
-
-
Interesting book
- By Ten42Batman on 01-29-17
By: Eyal Press
-
The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
-
-
I'm just not feeling this one....
- By J. Richmond on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
-
If I Betray These Words
- Moral Injury in Medicine and Why It's So Hard for Clinicians to Put Patients First
- By: Wendy Dean, Simon Talbot
- Narrated by: Wendy Dean
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Offering examples of how to make medicine better for the healers and those they serve, If I Betray These Words profiles clinicians across the country who are tough, resourceful, and resilient, but feel trapped between the patient-first values of their Hippocratic oath and the business imperatives of a broken healthcare system. If I Betray These Words confronts the threat and broken promises of moral injury—what it is; where it comes from; how it manifests; and who’s fighting back against it. We need better healthcare—for patients and for the workforce. It’s time to act.
-
-
Dust bowl
- By Doc on 04-12-23
By: Wendy Dean, and others
-
Poverty, by America
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
-
-
A testimonial based on facts and witness
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-27-23
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Broke in America
- Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty
- By: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Colleen Shaddox, Bomani Jones - foreword
- Narrated by: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Colleen Shaddox, JD Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nearly 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line - about $26,200 for a family of four. Low-income families and individuals are everywhere, from cities to rural communities. While poverty is commonly seen as a personal failure, or a deficiency of character or knowledge, it's actually the result of bad policy. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped - not because we lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to.
-
-
very left leaning
- By Bert Sloan on 09-06-22
By: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, and others
-
Halfway Home
- Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
- By: Reuben Jonathan Miller
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths.
-
-
Halfway to Nowhere
- By William on 04-19-21
-
Beautiful Souls
- Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
- By: Eyal Press
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the Swiss border with Austria in 1938, a police captain refuses to enforce a law barring Jewish refugees from entering his country. In the Balkans half a century later, a Serb from the war-blasted city of Vukovar defies his superiors in order to save the lives of Croats. At the height of the Second Intifada, a member of Israel's most elite military unit informs his commander he doesn't want to serve in the occupied territories.
Beautiful Souls explores the flipside of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention.
-
-
Interesting book
- By Ten42Batman on 01-29-17
By: Eyal Press
-
The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
-
-
I'm just not feeling this one....
- By J. Richmond on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
The Emergency
- A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER
- By: Thomas Fisher
- Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thomas Fisher
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As an emergency room doctor working on the rapid evaluation unit, Dr. Thomas Fisher has about three minutes to spend with the patients who come into the South Side of Chicago ward where he works before directing them to the next stage of their care. Bleeding: three minutes. Untreated wound that becomes life-threatening: three minutes. Kidney failure: three minutes. He examines his patients inside and out, touches their bodies, comforts and consoles them, and holds their hands on what is often the worst day of their lives.
-
-
Meh
- By chel_c42 on 03-29-22
By: Thomas Fisher
-
The Parrot and the Igloo
- Climate and the Science of Denial
- By: David Lipsky
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE'S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, bestselling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other.
-
-
Depressing
- By Watch Hill on 08-13-23
By: David Lipsky
-
The Knowledge Machine
- How Irrationality Created Modern Science
- By: Michael Strevens
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A paradigm-shifting work that revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science.
-
-
Almost there. Scholarly review.
- By John on 05-02-21
By: Michael Strevens
-
Nine Nasty Words
- English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever
- By: John McWhorter
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech - the urgency with which we say "f--k!" is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger. Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every angle: historical, sociological, political, linguistic.
-
-
Wonderful book!
- By BrittPet on 06-25-21
By: John McWhorter
-
Caste
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
-
-
Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
Eighteen Days in October
- The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East
- By: Uri Kaufman
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
October 2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that shaped the modern Middle East. The War was a trauma for Israel, a dangerous superpower showdown, and, following the oil embargo, a pivotal reordering of the global economic order. The Jewish State came shockingly close to defeat. After the war, Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned in disgrace, and a 9/11-style commission investigated the "debacle." But, argues Uri Kaufman, from the perspective of a half century, the War can be seen as a pivotal victory for Israel.
-
-
gripping history
- By Alex Troy on 11-12-23
By: Uri Kaufman
-
The Times
- How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism
- By: Adam Nagourney
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over a century, The New York Times has been an iconic institution in American journalism, one whose history is intertwined with the events that it chronicles—a newspaper read by millions of people every day to stay informed about events that have taken place across the globe. In The Times, Adam Nagourney, who’s worked at The New York Times since 1996, examines four decades of the newspaper’s history, from the final years of Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger’s reign as publisher to the election of Donald Trump in November 2016.
-
-
Excellent, enormously insightful!
- By Larry Kaufman on 10-31-23
By: Adam Nagourney
-
God's Shadow
- Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Alan Mikhail
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. Yet, despite its towering influence and centrality to the rise of our modern world, the Ottoman Empire's history has for centuries been distorted, misrepresented, and even suppressed in the West. Now Alan Mikhail presents a vitally needed recasting of Ottoman history, retelling the story of the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520).
-
-
Entertaining narrative, but poor scholarship
- By Yosemite on 09-15-20
By: Alan Mikhail
-
Index, a History of The
- A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age
- By: Dennis Duncan
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book - it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find "Butchers, to be avoided", or "Cows that shite Fire", or even catch "Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne". Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past.
-
-
Maybe a book that should be read rather than listened to
- By Amazon Customer on 11-09-22
By: Dennis Duncan
-
Economics in America
- An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality
- By: Angus Deaton
- Narrated by: Angus Deaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When economist Angus Deaton immigrated to the United States from Britain in the early 1980s, he was awed by America’s strengths and shocked by the extraordinary gaps he witnessed between people. Economics in America explains in clear terms how the field of economics addresses the most pressing issues of our times—from poverty, retirement, and the minimum wage to the ravages of the nation’s uniquely disastrous health care system—and narrates Deaton’s own account of his experiences as a naturalized US citizen and academic economist.
-
-
Perspective on interplay of economics and politics
- By JillT on 02-02-24
By: Angus Deaton
-
American Made
- What Happens to People When Work Disappears
- By: Farah Stockman
- Narrated by: Farah Stockman
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shannon, Wally, and John built their lives around their place of work. Shannon, a white single mother, became the first woman to run the dangerous furnaces at the Rexnord manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was proud of producing one of the world’s top brands of steel bearings. Wally, a black man known for his initiative and kindness, was promoted to chairman of efficiency, one of the most coveted posts on the factory floor, and dreamed of starting his own barbecue business one day.
-
-
Explains a lot!
- By MoMa on 11-12-21
By: Farah Stockman
Well explained
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Sunlight is the best antiseptic.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The financial crisis of 2008 and the after effects of the COVID crisis offer some deep inquiries into where we are going and where do the checks and balances come from.
Hard to hit pause... morality on trial
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well paced and measured narration by Neil Shah also a big plus for sharing the stories included. Highly recommended !!!!
A Close Look at The People We Don’t Usually See
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A Must Read for Conservatives
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Insightful and necessary
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not Turning Away
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very deep and important to read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good summary of social inequalities
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Agree and disagree
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.