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Robert D. Putnam is the Professor of International Peace at Harvard University. He is the authour of six previous books, and his articles have appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT as well as many other publications.
“Robert D. Putnam is technically a Harvard social scientist, but a
better description might be poet laureate of civil society. In Our
Kids, Putnam brings his talent for launching a high-level
discussion to a timely topic. . . . No one can finish Our Kids and
feel complacent about equal opportunity.”
*The New York Times Book Review*
“Putman’s new book is an eye-opener. When serious political
candidates maintain that there are no classes in America, Putnam
shows us the reality — and it is anything but reassuring."
*Washington Post Book World*
“Much of the current debate about inequality has a strangely
abstract quality, focusing on the excesses of the 1 per cent
without really coming to terms with what has happened to the
American middle class over the past two generations. Into this void
steps the political scientist Robert Putnam, with a truly masterful
volume that should shock Americans into confronting what has
happened to their society.”
*The Financial Times*
“Robert D. Putnam vividly captures a dynamic change in American
society—the widening class-based opportunity gap among young
people. The diminishing life chances of lower-class families and
the expanding resources of the upper-class are contrasted in sharp
relief in Our Kids, which also includes compelling suggestions of
what we as a nation should do about this trend. Putnam’s new book
is a must-read for all Americans concerned about the future of our
children.”
*William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University
Professor, Harvard University*
“Robert Putnam weaves together scholarship and storytelling to
paint a truly troubling picture of our country and its future. Our
Kids makes it absolutely clear that we need to put aside our
political bickering and fix how this country provides opportunity
for its millions of poor children. This book should be required
reading for every policymaker in America, if not every
American.”
*Geoffrey Canada, President, the Harlem Children’s Zone*
“In yet another path-breaking book about America’s changing social
landscape, Robert Putnam investigates how growing income gaps have
shaped our children so differently. His conclusion is chilling:
social mobility `seems poised to plunge in the years ahead,
shattering the American dream.’ Must reading from the White House
to your house.”
*David Gergen*
“With clarity and compassion, Robert Putnam tells the story of the
great social issue of our time: the growing gap between the lives
of rich and poor children, and the diminishing prospects of
children born into disadvantage. A profoundly important book and a
powerful reminder that we can and must do better.”
*Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and
the Hidden Power of Character*
“The book’s chief and authoritative contribution is its careful
presentation for a popular audience of important work on the
erosion, in the past half century, of so many forms of social,
economic, and political support for families, schools, and
communities. . . . Our Kids is a passionate, urgent book.”
*The New Yorker*
"A thoughtful and persuasive book."
*The Economist*
“The irony of the book is contained in its title: The love for `our
kids’ is driving the destruction of the collective possibilities of
other people’s kids. . . . Incredibly useful, essential
reading.”
*Esquire*
“Putnam writes clear, impassioned, accessible prose. . . . [He] has
made a real contribution in calling our attention to a situation of
profoundly divergent experiences for different classes that
Americans ought to find morally unacceptable, as he obviously
does.”
*The New York Review of Books*
“Charles Dickens used his literary genius to compel his
contemporaries to face up to the poverty and violence which
afflicted the poor in Victorian England, and Robert Putnam does the
same in his newest book, which analyzes `The American Dream in
Crisis’ not in social science lingo, but through the direct
experience of a group of young Americans also struggling with
poverty and violence. Our Kids shows that we are living in a
two-tier social and economic world where the affluent succeed
through education and economic opportunity, and the poor struggle
unavailingly to rise out of their poverty. The compelling results
of Putnam’s research are inescapable. Read this book and discover a
new America.”
*Jill Ker Conway*
"Highly readable. . . . An insightful book that paints a disturbing
picture of the collapse of the working class and the growth of an
upper class that seems to be largely unaware of the other's
precarious existence."
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
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