The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America Hardcover - 2007

Media reviews

"This book is . . . about the millions of people who hold down two or three jobs . . . and struggle to find time to read to their kids . . . Through meticulous research, Katherine and Victor tell the personal stories of nine families . . . You'll find yourself rooting, as I did, for each and every one of them. In sharing their lives and struggles, these families have done more to educate than any set of statistics or government report ever could. Policymakers, jounalists, think tanks, and people of good conscience everywhere must take notice . . . [The Missing Class] is a call to action to change America . . . Like other books that transformed our nation, [it] will inspire us to work for . . . an America where the family you were born into or the color of your skin never controls your destiny." —from the Foreword by Senator John Edwards

"At last, a focus on people who struggle from month to month with housing, health care and education costs but don't fit into the government's comfortingly minimalist definition of poverty. Newman and Chen give us a vivid, close-up, and often moving look at the urban 'near poor.' An excellent follow-up to Newman's essential body of work on America's economic anxieties."—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

"With riveting detail, The Missing Class uses the compelling stories of nine families to portray a neglected group—more numerous than the officially poor—who work hard, play by the rules, yet live on the brink of disaster, one unlucky step away from plunging into poverty. Sensible and realistic programs, Newman and Chen show, could prevent their fall, reduce their insecurity, and help the Missing Class join the middle class." —Michael B. Katz, coauthor of One Nation Divisible: What America Was and What It Is Becoming

"The Missing Class is an important book. It is must reading for those concerned about the fate of Americans who live so close to the margins."—William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"Just above the artificial ‘poverty line,’ millions of hard-working people struggle invisibly to gain a foothold on the promise of the American Dream. Their raw hardships and persistent hopes, collected in this book of unflinching portraits, ought to sound the alarm for an America grown complacent."—David Shipler, author of The Working Poor: Invisible in America

". . . there are many millions of Americans who are not doing well, and the nation is not addressing their plight. Thirty-seven million Americans, many of them children, are officially classified as poor. What is not widely known is that another 57 million are struggling just one notch above the poverty line. This is spelled out in a new book, "The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America," by Katherine Newman and Victor Tan Chen . . ."—Bob Herbert, New York Times