{"product_id":"flophouse-life-on-the-bowery-9780375503221","title":"Flophouse: Life on the Bowery","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"This book takes you to places you think you dont want to enter  to people you think you dont want to meet  to lives you think you dont want to live--and makes you rethink all your assumptions. It reveals the tremendous strength and humanity of those who are usually ignored. And as you pay attention  your own humanity expands.\" ---Susan Stamberg  special correspondent  National Public Radio  In its heyday  close to one hundred thousand men found shelter each night in flophouses along Americas largest and most infamous skid row  the Bowery. Today  only a handful of flops are left  their tiny five- and ten-dollar-a-night rooms home to fewer than a thousand men  mostly long-time residents. In a handful of years  this world will be gone.  In Flophouse  documentarians David Isay and Stacy Abramson and photographer Harvey Wang chronicle this vanishing world through the voices and portraits of a number of those residents  interspersed with photographs of their surroundings. The men come from all manner of backgrounds  and the rich variety of the tales they tell is a testament to the number of ways the bottom can fall out of life in America  even in prosperous times. This book warrants comparison with Walker Evans and James Agees Let Us Now Praise Famous Men  but the authors were inspired most directly by Joseph Mitchell  who wrote about some of these same flophouses with an honest warmth and an acceptance of life as its found. Shimmering with humanity and utterly devoid of false sentiment  Flophouse is a powerful reminder that even on the margins  life defies all attempts at reduction.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45280455327797,"sku":"ByrdShop_0375503226","price":78.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780375503221.jpg?v=1780637055","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/flophouse-life-on-the-bowery-9780375503221","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}