What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Tolls of Uncertainty’ by Sarah Damaske

Through the intimate stories of those seeking work, “The Tolls of Uncertainty” offers a startling look at the nation’s unemployment system — who it helps, who it hurts, and what, if anything, we can do to make it fair. Drawing on interviews with one hundred men and women who have lost jobs across Pennsylvania, Sarah Damaske examines the ways unemployment shapes families, finances, health, and the job hunt. Damaske demonstrates that commonly held views of unemployment are either incomplete or just plain wrong. Shaped by a person’s gender and class, unemployment generates new inequalities that cast uncertainties on the search for work and on life chances beyond the world of work, threatening opportunity in America.