$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, chosen by the students, faculty and staff on the Common Reading Selection Committee, will be distributed to all new first-year students during New Student Orientation prior to fall semester. Described by the publisher as “a revelatory account of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don’t think it exists,” the book examines the surprisingly widespread lack of basic necessities within in the U.S. and its impacts.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, states, “Affluent Americans often cherish the belief that poverty in America is far more comfortable than poverty in the rest of the world. Edin and Shaefer’s devastating account of life at $2 or less a day blows that myth out of the water. This is world-class poverty at a level that should mobilize not only national alarm, but international attention.”

Themes from $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America will also be the focus of Convocation on Monday, August 20, 2018 at Reynolds Coliseum to welcome the Class of 2022.

• Learn more about the book.