"Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods-that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors-which lives on in full force to this day. So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom....

Take a journey deep inside the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. Shocking and incisive, it paints a picture of a national nightmare, which is all too real for most--Container.

"The Dorrit family, William and his three children live in the Marshalsea, a debtor's prison. The youngest Amy, Little Dorrit was born in the prison. All three children are allowed to work outside and return at night to be with their father. Little Dorrit does sewing for Mrs. Clemens and when her son, Arthur returns from India, he helps get Dorrit freed from prison. When the family suddenly comes into money, all of them except Little Dorrit become...

"Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja's otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back--by stealing Gisele's life for herself. The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess...

As David K. Shipler makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideology--hard, honest work. But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low-paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse. Shipler exposes the interlocking...

Captain Jack owes a blood debt to the legendary Davy Jones, who captains the ghostly Flying Dutchman. Unless Jack can find a way out, he will be cursed to an afterlife of eternal servitude and damnation.