Another Sort of Life: A Professor's Life Among the Downwardly Mobile,the New Poor, and the Underclass of the Troubled 1980s - Softcover

Calvert, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1436319153 ISBN 13: 9781436319157

Publisher: Xlibris, 2008

Synopsis

Spurred by boredom and maybe a touch of mid-life crisis, a political science professor quits the security of academic life and with just the cash in his pocket, a worn-out station wagon and a cargo of books hits the road in search of something - different. economy and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. His new colleagues include ne'er-do-wells, zanies, bohemians, underachievers, and people temporarily or permanently "down on their luck." He joins the "new poor" - an unprecedented class of downwardly mobile people for whom university degrees, diligence, and doing "everything right" have lost their force - and he becomes himself a misfit who can't, or won't, hang onto a job. During his travels he makes a catch-as-catch-can living as an adjunct professor, a field worker, a department store clerk, a civil servant, a door-to-door salesman, a janitor, a car washer, a day laborer, even a seller of blood - his own. This is a close-up view of the dark (and now largely neglected) side of the 1980s, also of a subculture which lives just below the surface of middle-class American life and which shares neither in its affluence nor its aspirations. It's a fouryear stroll on the wrong side of the tracks, a tale reminiscent of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, yet leavened with a dash of humor.

About this title

About the Author:

John Calvert is a former professor of political science who has taught at several colleges and universities in the United States, as well as Germany, Sicily, the Azores, China, and Ukraine. He has been a regular faculty member, an exchange teacher, and an adjunct professor. Retired from teaching, he remains active in the educational reform movement Currently he lives in Fargo, North Dakota.

About this edition

• Publisher: Xlibris
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1436319153
• ISBN 13: 9781436319157
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 350