When Work Disappears

In his long-awaited new book, our foremost authority 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, William Julius Wilson persuasively argues that the 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 before, When Work Disappears is a sane, courageous, and desperately important work.