‘Candid, empathetic portraits of silenced men, women, and children.’ –Kirkus

Broadly acclaimed photographer and writer Chris Arnade shines fresh light on America’s poor, drug-addicted, and forgotten–both urban and rural, blue state and red state–and indicts the elitists who’ve left them behind.

Like Jacob Riis in the 1890s, Walker Evans in the 1930s, or Michael Harrington in the 1960s, Chris Arnade bares the truth of our current course divide in memorable true stories. Arnade’s raw, about Dignity: Looking for Respect in Back Row America deeply reported accounts cut through today’s clickbait press headlines and indict the elitists who misinterpreted poverty and obsession in America for decades.

After abandoning his Wall Road career, Arnade made a decision to document poverty and addiction in the Bronx. He began interviewing, photographing, and becoming good friends with homeless lovers, and spent hours in medication dens and McDonald’s. After that he started driving across America to observe how all of those other country likened. He found the same types of stories all over the place, across lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and geography.

Individuals he surely got to know, from Alabama and California to Maine and Nevada, gave Arnade a new respect for the dignity and resilience of what he calls America’s Back Row–those who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class. The strivers in leading Row, with their advanced levels and upward mobility, see the Back Row’s ideals as worthless. They scorn anyone who remains within a dying city or town as foolish, and mock anyone who clings to religion or tradition as naïve.

As Takeesha, a woman in the Bronx, told Arnade, she really wants to be observed she sees herself: ‘a prostitute, a mother of 6, and a kid of God.’ This book is his try to help ordinary people truly observe, hear, and respect millions of people who’ve been left behind.