The acclaimed author and New Yorker columnist delves into the core of American poverty in the early 1980s: “Invaluable.” —The Washington Post
First appearing as a three-part series in the New Yorker, Ken Auletta’s The Underclass provides an enlightening look at the lives of addicts, dropouts, ex-convicts, welfare recipients, and individuals experiencing homelessness.
Auletta’s investigation began with a seemingly simple goal: to find out who exactly makes up the poorest of the poor, and to trace the many paths that took them there. As the author follows 250 hardened members of this “underclass,” he focuses on efforts to help them reconstruct their lives and find a functional place in mainstream society. Through the lives of the men and women he encounters, Auletta discovers the complex truths that have made hard-core poverty in America such an intractable problem.
In a nation where poverty and welfare rolls are declining but the underclass persists, the United States is as conflicted as ever about its responsibilities toward all its people. With his empathy, insight, and expert reportage, Auletta’s The Underclass remains as pertinent as ever.
Ken Auletta (b.1942) has written for the New Yorker since 1977, where he has been the “Annals of Communications” columnist since 1992. He is the author of eleven books, five of which are national bestsellers. Early in his career, Auletta was the chief political correspondent for the New York Post, a columnist for the Village Voice and the New York Daily News, and a writer for New York magazine. For the New Yorker, he has probed corporate culture and the rise of the Internet, and profiled business leaders such as Bill Gates, Barry Diller, and Rupert Murdoch. Auletta won a National Magazine Award in 2001 for his New Yorker feature on Ted Turner, and he has been a judge for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. His books include The Underclass; Googled: The End of the World As We Know It; Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway; and World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies. Auletta lives in Manhattan.