Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America

Eyal Press

Aug 2021 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Neil Shah

About this audiobook

Drone pilots who carry out targeted assassinations. Undocumented immigrants who man the "kill floors" of industrial slaughterhouses. Guards who patrol the wards of America's most violent and abusive prisons. In Dirty Work, Eyal Press offers a paradigm-shifting view of the moral landscape of contemporary America through the stories of people who perform society's most ethically troubling jobs. As Press shows, we are increasingly shielded and distanced from an array of morally questionable activities that other, less privileged people perform in our name. The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn unprecedented attention to the issue of "essential workers," and to the health and safety risks to which workers in prisons and slaughterhouses are exposed. But Dirty Work examines another, less familiar set of occupational hazards: psychological and emotional hardships such as stigma, shame, PTSD, and moral injury. These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income workers, undocumented immigrants, women, and people of color. Illuminating the moving, at times harrowing stories of the people doing society's dirty work, and incisively examining the structures of power and complicity that shape their lives, Press reveals fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work, and the hidden costs of inequality in America.

Ratings and reviews

An absolutely necessary book. Requires the reader to look in the mirror and examine how they are implicated in the oppressive systems that are all around us, even if they may be out of sight. Highly recommended for anyone with 'the will to know'.

About the author

Eyal Press is an author and journalist based in New York. His work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, the Raritan Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Absolute Convictions, and a past recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.

Neil Shah is an Audie Award-nominated narrator and AudioFile Earphones Award winner who has recorded over one hundred audiobooks. A classically trained actor with an MFA from the Old Globe/University of San Diego program, Neil has appeared off-Broadway and on regional stages, as well as in film and television.