In Dirty Work, Eyal Press offers a paradigm-shifting view of the moral landscape of contemporary America through the stories of people who perform society’s most ethically troubling jobs. His subjects include prison guards, slaughterhouse attendants, oil and gas workers, and drone operators who kill from behind desks.

As Press shows, we are increasingly shielded and distanced from an array of morally questionable activities that other, less privileged people perform on our behalf. Americans aren’t prepared to give up mass incarceration or cheap meat, but we’re not willing to pay what it costs to achieve these things with a modicum of decency or safety. So we hide the work and shun the workers. It’s easier to judge a worker on a polluting oil rig than it is to acknowledge our own dependence on fossil fuels.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn unprecedented attention to essential workers, and to the health and safety risks to which workers in prisons and slaughterhouses are exposed. But Dirty Work examines a less familiar set of occupational hazards: psychological and emotional hardships such as stigma, shame, PTSD, and moral injury. These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income workers, undocumented immigrants, and people of color.

Illuminating the moving, sometimes harrowing stories of the people doing society’s dirty work, and incisively examining the structures of power and complicity that shape their lives, Press reveals fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work and the hidden costs of inequality in America.