Unfortunately, many economically struggling families today see college as beyond their reach--academically, culturally and financially. Working-class young people need a college degree to earn a living wage in today's economy. Yet financial obstacles and a cynical belief that the system benefits only the comfortable and connected seem to place a university education off-limits to tens of millions of Americans. Working Class to College exposes an education class divide that is threatening the American dream of upward social mobility and sowing resentment among those shut out or staggering under crushing debt. The book addresses ways to reduce college costs and shares the inspiring accounts of those who have endured all sorts of hardship ”homelessness, an incarcerated parent, dangerously low self-esteem--and fought their way to college and commencement. Robert Carr draws on his blue-collar background as a financially strapped teenager who caught a break as a high school senior more than fifty years ago, and who has made it his mission to mentor and provide need-based scholarships that give working-class kids the opportunity to graduate in four years without student debt.

Working Class to College: The Promise and Peril Facing Blue-Collar America

Business & Money

Carr, Robert Owen

Johnson, Dirk

Education & Reference

GSBF Media

First Chance: How Kids with Nothing Can Change Everything examines the remarkable triumphs of young people considered least likely to attain a college degree: those who have experienced foster care (three percent graduation rate) or the incarceration of a parent, especially a mother (two percent graduation rate). Some 2.7 million schoolchildren have experienced parental incarceration, while nearly 500,000 are declared wards of the state annually. Yet their experiences receive little attention. The young people themselves are frequently hesitant to talk about their lives, burdened with a sense of shame, even though they are blameless.Philanthropist and author Robert O. Carr has turned the focus of his college scholarship program, Give Something Back, on these often forgotten and neglected kids. As their stories reveal, they have the smarts and drive to compete with peers from more comfortable backgrounds. The author argues that these young people can draw on their special and painful insights to forge powerful change, provided society acknowledges them—and extends a first chance.

First Chance: How Kids with Nothing Can Change Everything

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Looks at one year on the rodeo circuit, telling the story of modern cowboys traveling the country chasing a dangerous eight-second dream of fame and fortune on the back of a wild horse or bull

Biting the Dust

Humor & Entertainment

Simon&Schuster

To the fan, the rodeo cowboy is the distinctly American embodiment of the romantic Old West. But to the young men who live the profession, the realities are modest pay, continuous travel, and the constant threat of injury. While he was the Denver bureau chief of the New York Times, Dirk Johnson spent a year on the professional rodeo circuit with cowboys, watching them try to hang on to bucking horses and Brahma bulls—and to wives and livelihoods that seemed only one fall away from disappearing. Biting the Dust covers the circuit’s biggest events in Denver, the capital of the New West, to small towns on the Great Plains like McCook, Nebraska, where rodeo continues to thrive even as the population shrinks. Johnson takes the reader beyond sentimental visions of the rodeo cowboy and the American West and provides an unforgettable and authentic story of the rodeo today.

Biting the Dust: The Wild Ride and Dark Romance of the Rodeo Cowboy and the American West

Bison Books

A harrowing look at the personal, social, and environmental impact of America’s newest drug abuse trend. Methamphetamine has been around for decades, but the recent surge in clandestine “cooking” labs in homes, hotel rooms, and even cars has made this toxic stimulant exceptionally affordable, accessible, and dangerous. With staggering facts and up-to-the-minute information, award-winning journalist Dirk Johnson has written the definitive book about America’s methamphetamine pandemic. Johnson examines the unprecedented physical, mental, social, and environmental destruction caused by meth use and meth production. He explains why this drug is so harmful, how it differs from other drugs, and how it has devastated individuals, families, and communities. While the facts are decidedly discouraging, Johnson describes successful national, state, and local efforts to fight meth production and prevent addiction, and shares hopeful stories from recovering meth addicts.

Meth: The Home-cooked Menace

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Addiction & Recovery

Hazelden

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Books by Johnson, Dirk