Harvard Works Because We Do [Hardcover]

Greg Halpern (Photographer), Studs Terkel (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2003

Greg Halpern grew up in Buffalo, New York, and graduated from Harvard in 1999. He then spent three years interviewing and photographing cooks, custodians and other service workers at the University while working for the Harvard Living Wage Campaign. In April 2001 there was a sit-in at Harvard on behalf of the blue-collar workers. The institution that didn't pay "living wages" - while collecting $5 million a day in interest on its endowment - had actually lowered the workers' pay in the months leading up to the confrontation. The personal accounts from the employees about their lives and work are illuminating reminders of the wide disparity of circumstances that exist in this land of plenty.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In April 2001, Harvard undergraduates drew national media attention when they staged a sit-in for the Living Wage Campaign, an effort to induce the university to pay its workers the same living wage guaranteed by the city of Cambridge. (Harvard had been cutting wages even while its endowment tripled.) Halpern was among the 50 students who stormed the hall housing the president's office, and this revealing volume of blue-collar narratives in the tradition of Studs Terkel's classic Working, accompanied by large, b&w photographs of the subjects, grew out of his passionate activism on their behalf. "You want to know about regular working stiffs? You want to know what I do? I unloaded from a truck probably every book you ever read at Harvard," answered loading dock shipper Gary Newmark, Halpern's first interview subject. With stories in their own words alongside proud but weary and unsmiling portraits of the chefs, line servers, custodians, guards and dishwashers who feed and clean up after an elite faculty and student body, Halpern puts a face on the daunting statistics facing America's minimum-wage workers, who must labor 80 hours a week to cover basic living expenses, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Here, we meet Rachel Herman, a transgendered chef at the Signet Society of Arts and Letters who describes her cooking as an art form. An anonymous Haitian custodian tells of the small humiliations of the job-his supervisor leaves pennies on the ground to make sure he cleans carefully. Bill Brooks, a custodian at the president's office for 30 years, describes work as escape from homesickness for the small Tennessee hometown he left decades ago. Though the book's format is not original, the rarefied Harvard setting makes America's class differences especially stark.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Halpern's activism on behalf of Harvard's service workers was informed by his photographs and interviews of them. -- Hope Magazine, Kimberly Ridley, November/December 2003

Powerful and surprising...these photographs of Harvard workers are emotionally and skillfully direct. -- New York Times Book Review, Margo Jefferson, 28 September 2003

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Quantuck Lane Press; 1 edition (November 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971454892
• ISBN-13: 978-0971454897
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,387,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and sensitive...its about time, November 19, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Harvard Works Because We Do (Hardcover)

This book is long overdue. Listening to the NPR show "The Connection" I became aware that the forces that resulted in this book have actually brought about some change at Harvard...why did it take a public humiliation of Harvard to do what they should have done all along...In any case the book has beautiful and sensitive photographs coupled with startling interviews that everyone should read....

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow! What an exceptional book!, November 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Harvard Works Because We Do (Hardcover)

I've been waiting for this book to come out ever since I read a review in the New York Times book review. It was worth the wait. I found it to be thought provoking, informative as well as a glimpse into the lives of service workers. Regardless of your political persuasion, this book deserves to be read. I thought that the author did a remarkable job presenting the facts behind the Living Wage Campaign. I could not put the book down once I started reading it and the people profiled in the book stayed with me. Read this book!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Photographic Star is Born, December 22, 2003

By 

Jake Halpern "JPH" (Cortez, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harvard Works Because We Do (Hardcover)

For those of you who thought that documentary photography was boring, think again. Greg Halpern brings stunning inner life to the portraits in this book. The early rave reviews in the New York Times and the Boston Globe are dead on -- this kid has serious talent and it translates into one of the most memorable photo books that I have seen in years. I bought several copies of this first edition for friends and family and I have no doubt that these books will one day be collectors' items. For those of you who are photo buffs, and even for those of you who are not, this book is a must have!