Photo © 2003 Claudio Vazquez

• About this Author

author spotlight

David K. Shipler worked for the New York Times from 1966 to 1988, reporting from New York, Saigon, Moscow, and Jerusalem before serving as chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington, D.C. He has also written for The New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of three other books—Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams; Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land (which won the Pulitzer Prize); and A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America. Mr. Shipler, who has been a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and a senior associate at the Carnegie... Read More

author bookshelf

Ragged Dick
or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks
Written by Horatio Alger
Introduction by David K. Shipler

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: September 13, 2005
Price: $9.95

“Alger was perhaps American Capitalism’s greatest and most effective propagandist.”—Richard Wright

Written to inspire schoolboys to strive for “honesty, industry, frugality, and a worthy ambition,” the novels of Horatio Alger (1832–99) are infused with great humanity, broad humor, and a surprisingly sophisticated view of Gilded Age propriety. Central to Alger’s philosophy is... Read more >

A Country of Strangers
Blacks and Whites in America
Written by David K. Shipler

Format: Trade Paperback, 624 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 1, 1998
Price: $16.95

Choice Outstanding Academic Book

A Country of Strangers is a magnificent exploration of the psychological landscape where blacks and whites meet. To tell the story in human rather than abstract terms, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David K. Shipler bypasses both extremists and celebrities and takes us among ordinary Americans as they encounter... Read more >

The Working Poor
Invisible in America
Written by David K. Shipler

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 4, 2005
Price: $16.00

Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. The term by which they are... Read more >

The Working Poor
Invisible in America
Written by David K. Shipler

Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: February 3, 2004
Price: $29.95

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The Working Poor
Invisible in America
Written by David K. Shipler

Format: eBook, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 12, 2008
Price: $16.00

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