When Work Disappears

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 …