Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging

An illuminating and personal journey through Jeff Ferrell's eight month odyssey of living off the streets

“Patrolling the neighborhoods of central Fort Worth, sorting through trash piles, exploring dumpsters, scanning the streets and the gutters for items lost or discarded, I gathered the city's degraded bounty, then returned home to sort and catalogue the take.”—from the Introduction

In December of 2001 Jeff Ferrell quit his job as tenured professor, moved back to his hometown of Fort Worth,...