The Poverty of Antipoverty

These volumes, the product of extensive meetings by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Seminar on Race and Poverty, are just about the best items in the copious literature on poverty, which has been a minor growth industry ever since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 declared unconditional war on poverty. The first volume consists mostly of papers written by the academic warriors, among them Herbert
Gans, Oscar Lewis, Lee Rainwater, Harold Watts, and Stephan Thernstrom. The second volume, f...