International bestseller 
The book based on the multi-media show is an international bestseller. 

Read an online copy of the book here

In Scandinavia it sold the equivalent of 3 million copies in America. In Germany it was the longest running foreign book on the bestseller list ever. 

In its personal and gripping tone many teachers in anthropology, sociology and political science find it an important tool "to help bring human life to the teaching" of their students. 

High lights from the book 
In this illustrated odyssey of 800 photos, the bulk in color, Jacob Holdt describes his experiences at the Wounded Knee uprising, with drug addicts in "shooting galleries", and in projects with welfare mothers. 

He also depicts the friendships he developed with transvestites and transsexuals; the violence and murders he witnessed; his own arrest by the FBI; and his startling encounters with the opposite extreme of American society, including Jay Rockefeller and Ted Kennedy. 

A modern Jacob Riis 
The book is a forceful reminder that the poverty and inhuman living conditions which were so brilliantly exposed a hundred years before by Holdt's fellow Dane, Jacob A. Riis, in his classic study, "How the Other Half Lives," continue to exist. 
 

The book is self-published by American Pictures Foundation in order to enable the homeless or the actual people portrayed in the book to sell it.

The book is now sold out since Jacob Holdt lost too much money selling it this way. He needs about $45.000 to reprint it. But you can read his online version here:

Online virtual book

This page in Danish

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