Overview

In a book that Robert B. Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, called ""provocative and insightful . . . combining revealing details about specific people with thoughtful analysis of the trends that have shaped their lives,"" Katherine S. Newman, former dean of social sciences at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and award-winning author of No Shame in My Game, exposes a growing but largely invisible group of Americans: the aging urban underclass. While an increasing portion of the U.S. population is about to retire-the number of Americans over age sixty-five is expected to double to seventy million in the next thirty years-the experience of middle and old age, as Newman shows, differs dramatically for whites and minorities, for the middle class and the poor, and for those living in the suburbs versus the city. Focusing on the lives of elderly African Americans and Latinos in pockets of New York City where wages are low, crime is often high, and the elderly have few support systems they can rely on, A Different Shade of Gray provides ""a well-documented portrait of a little-examined group"" (Kirkus Reviews).

Full Product Details

9781565846159

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Reviews

""A much-needed counterweight to the endless streams of publications that feature golden older people enjoying wealth and good health. —American Journal of Sociology ""An excellent work."" —Library Journal ""A very thoughtful and clear picture of growing old in the inner city."" —Clamor Magazine

A much-needed counterweight to the endless streams of publications that feature golden older people enjoying wealth and good health. -American Journal of Sociology An excellent work. -Library Journal A very thoughtful and clear picture of growing old in the inner city. -Clamor Magazine

A much-needed counterweight to the endless streams of publications that feature golden older people enjoying wealth and good health. --American Journal of Sociology An excellent work. --Library Journal A very thoughtful and clear picture of growing old in the inner city. --Clamor Magazine

Author Information

Katherine S. Newman is professor of sociology and James Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. A widely published expert on poverty and the working poor, she was previously the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes '41 Professor in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the department of sociology at Princeton University. She is the author of several books on urban poverty, including No Shame in My Game, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize and the Sidney Hillman Book Award in 2000, and A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City (The New Press). She is a co-author, with Victor Tan Chen, of The Missing Class.

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