Below the Line

In 144 stunning black-and-white photographs (which won the 1987 International Center of Photography Journalism Award for ""outstanding accomplishment in photographic reportage'') and 14 first-person narratives, this disturbing book demonstrates the pervasiveness of poverty in America. The starkly eloquent text, edited by Bird, conveys the bravery and pathos of the subjects' lives in their own words. For example, readers learn that a Tennessee man has to pull his own teeth because he can't afford a dentist and that migrant workers who pick vegetables are often brutalized. Help for the poor didn't come until How the Other Half Lives (1901) shocked the public a few generations ago; one hopes that this book will have the same effect. (September)