When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor Paperback - 1997

First line

An elderly woman who has lived in one inner-city neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago for more than forty years reflected: I've been here since March 21, 1953.

From the jacket flap

Wilson, one of our foremost authorities on race and poverty, challenges decades of liberal and conservative pieties to look squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on our urban ghettos. Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, Wilson persuasively argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities--from fatherless households to drugs and violent crime--stem directly from the disappearance of blue-collar jobs in the wake of a globalized economy. Wilson's achievement is to portray this crisis as one that affects all Americans, and to propose solutions whose benefits would be felt across our society. At a time when welfare is ending and our country's racial dialectic is more strained than ever, When Work Disappears is a sane, courageous, and desperately important work.

"Wilson is the keenest liberal analyst of the most perplexing of all American problems...[This book is] more ambitious and more accessible than anything he has done before."
"--The New Yorker

Media reviews

Citations

• New York Times, 01/04/1998, Page 24
• Publishers Weekly, 07/14/1997, Page 0