Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work

• Edited by Richard Ford
• Proceeds benefit 826michigan student programs

About the Book

Work, for Americans especially, is the laboratory of our moral lives.

How we earn our living, or don't, or refuse to, or used to; how we think about jobs; how our jobs illustrate and depict us; how work frustrates and ennobles us - all these premises are the natural, time-proven inspiration and source-ground for great literature.

In a fantastic selection of great literature edited by Richard Ford, BLUE COLLAR, WHITE COLLAR, NO COLLAR: Stories of Work (HarperCollins, on sale April 19, 2011), these themes of work and daily obligations are explored as a way to understand our culture, our society, and our humanity - or even just to make us laugh.

The author's advance and all the book's proceeds will go to writing and tutoring center 826michigan, which offers free literacy and other programs to over 2,000 school-aged students in need. The book's theme of employment is especially relevant to the nonprofit's work in the State of Michigan, which is engaged in a long battle to reduce its unemployment rate—still the highest in the nation.

Ford's vital collection of stories about work will be a lasting chronicle of how Americans are employed, how they find work and how they leave it. During these harrowing economic times, as unemployment peaks in America and headlines about job loss and preservation dominate most newspapers, this moving and timely collection could not be more relevant.

About the Editor

Richard Ford is one of America's most lauded writers of literary fiction, and was the first individual to win both the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for the same work, Independence Day. His other books include The Sportswriter, The Lay of the Land, and the story collection Rock Springs. In addition, Ford has edited anthologies such as The Granta Book of the American Long Story, The Granta Book of The American ShortStory, The Complete Stories of Anton Chekov, and The Best American Short Stories (1990). His critical acclaim positions Ford among America's most respected living writers.

Table of Contents

• "Business Talk" Max Apple
• "The Gully" Russell Banks
• "Me and Miss Mandible" Donald Barthelme
• "Unjust" Richard Bausch
• "The Working Girl" Ann Beattie
• "Zapatos" T.C. Boyle
• "(I Thought My Father Looked Like FDR)" George Chambers
• "The World of Apples" John Cheever
• "Drummond and Son" Charles D'Ambrosio
• "The Writer's Trade" Nicholas Delbanco
• "Edison" Junot Diaz
• "Delivery" Andre Dubus
• "Sauerkraut Soup" Stuart Dybek
• "The Flaw in the Design" Deborah Eisenberg
• "Great Experiment" Jeffrey Eugenides
• "Under the Radar" Richard Ford
• "The Store" Edward P. Jones
• "The Collector of Maladies" Jhumpa Lahiri
• "Cowboy" Thomas McGuane
• "A Solo Song for Doc" James Allen McPherson
• "Some Women" Alice Munro
• "High Lonesome" Joyce Carol Oates
• "Geese" ZZ Packer
• "The Valiant Woman" J.F. Powers
• "Job History" Annie Proulx
• "Officer Friendly" Lewis Robinson
• "Foreign Shores" James Salter
• "Minotaur" Jim Shepard
• "Pharmacy" Elizabeth Strout
• "The Death of the Traveling Salesman" Eudora Welty
• "The Deposition" Tobias Wolff
• "A Glutton for Punishment" Richard Yates