Eyal Press — Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America
When:
Thursday, Oct 28, 2021 6:00p -
7:00p
Repeats weekly
Thursday, Oct 28, 2021 6:00p -
7:00p
Repeats weekly
Where:
Online event
Admission:
FREE
Categories:
Lectures & Conferences, Social Good, Virtual & Streaming
Event website:
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/60f5bda24a846b2f0012c77e
Join the Boston Public Library in partnership with the Kirstein Business Library and Innovation Center for an online talk with Eyal Press, author of Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. Professor of history at New York University Kim Phillips-Fein will moderate this discussion.
This program will happen over Zoom webinar. People who are interested in attending are kindly asked to register at the following link: https://boston-public-library.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_P83u92_hRPebQ9Zhc9AjtQ.
About the book
Drone pilots who carry out targeted assassinations. Undocumented immigrants who man the “kill floors” of industrial slaughterhouses. Guards who patrol the wards of the United States’ 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 essential workers, and to the health and safety risks to which workers in prisons and slaughterhouses are exposed. But Dirty Work examines a 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, sometimes 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.
To purchase this book from Trident Booksellers & Cafe, one of our community bookstore partners, please visit their website: https://www.tridentbookscafe.com/event/bpl-event-dirty-work-%EF%BB%BFessential-jobs-and-hidden-toll-inequality-america. Use the code BPLSHIP for free media mail delivery!
About the author
Eyal Press is an author and a journalist based in New York. The recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, an Andrew Carnegie fellowship, a Cullman Center fellowship at the New York Public Library, and a Puffin Foundation fellowship at Type Media Center, he is a contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and numerous other publications. He is the author of Beautiful Souls and Absolute Convictions.
About the moderator
Kim Phillips-Fein is a professor of history at New York University, where she teaches in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Department of History. She is the author, most recently, of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics (Metropolitan Books).
