Over the summer and fall of 2011, DW Gibson followed Terkel’s model — he went around the country, recording the voices of those in the wake of the Great Recession.

Not Working: People Talk About Losing A Job and Finding Their Way in Today’s Changing Economy reveals something Americans only talk about in numbers. The unemployment rate is shared every month, but how much (or how little) we are actually making is usually not. And how Americans feel about being out of work is not a topic most want to discuss.

Read the review at the Los Angeles Review of Books.