In "Someplace Like America," writer Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael S. Williamson take us to the working-class heart of America, bringing to life-through shoe leather reporting, memoir, vivid stories, stunning photographs, and thoughtful analysis-the deepening crises of poverty and homelessness. The story begins in 1980, when the authors joined forces to cover the America being ignored by the mainstream media-people living on the margins and losing their jobs as a result of deindustrialization. Since then, Maharidge and Williamson have traveled more than half a million miles to investigate the state of the working class (winning a Pulitzer Prize in the process). In "Someplace Like America," they follow the lives of several families over the thirty-year span to present an intimate and devastating portrait of workers going jobless. This brilliant and essential study-begun in the trickle-down Reagan years and culminating with the recent banking catastrophe-puts a human face on today's grim economic numbers. It also illuminates the courage and resolve with which the next generation faces the future.