About 500 feet under­ground, jour­nal­ist Jeanne Marie Laskas was crawl­ing through a coal mine in east­ern Ohio, feel­ing humil­i­at­ed because here was a $27 bil­lion indus­try which touched her life every time she flipped a light switch, and she knew almost noth­ing about it. Hid­den Amer­i­ca intends to rem­e­dy some of that. This is only one hid­den world. Oth­ers that Laskas explores: an Alaskan oil rig, a migrant labor camp in Maine, the air traf­fic con­trol tow­er at LaGuardia Air­port, a beef ranch in Texas, a land­fill in Cal­i­for­nia, a long-haul truck­er in Iowa, a gun shop in Ari­zona, and the Cincin­nati Ben­gals cheer­lead­ers. Cheer­lead­ers? Yes. They, too, are hid­den Amer­i­ca, and you will be amazed by what she tells you about them.

These are the peo­ple who touch our lives, but most of us nev­er think about them, except in pass­ing. All that is about to change.These are the sto­ries of the peo­ple who make Amer­i­ca work — peo­ple we bare­ly notice, if at all, and yet we’re depen­dent on them.