Class matters / correspondents of the New York Times ; introduction by Bill Keller.

Format:

Book

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social classes--United States.

Social classes.

Social stratification.

United States.

Social mobility--United States.

Social mobility.

Social values--United States.

Social values.

Social stratification--United States.

Social classes--United States--Case studies.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xviii, 268 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Times Books, 2005.

Summary:

We Americans Have Long Thought of Ourselves As Unburdened By class distinctions. We have no hereditary aristocracy or landed gentry, and even the poorest among us feel that they can become rich through education, hard work, or sheer gumption. And yet social class remains a powerful force in American life.

In Class Matters, a team of New York Times reporters explores the ways in which class-defined as a combination of income, education, wealth, and occupation-influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity. We meet individuals in Kentucky and Chicago who have used education to lift themselves out of poverty and others in Virginia and Washington whose lack of education holds them back. We meet an upper-middle-class family in Georgia who move to a different town every few years, and the newly rich in Nantucket whose mega-mansions have driven out the longstanding residents. And we see how class disparities manifest themselves at the doctor's office and at the marriage altar.

For anyone concerned about the future of the American dream, Class Matters is truly essential reading.

Contents:

1 Shadowy Lines That Still Divide / Janny Scott, David Leonhardt 1

2 Life at the Top in America Isn't Just Better, It's Longer / Janny Scott 27

3 A Marriage of Unequals / Tamar Lewin 51

4 Up from the Holler: Living in Two Worlds, at Home in Neither / Tamar Lewin 63

5 On a Christian Mission to the Top / Laurie Goodstein, David D. Kirkpatrick 73

6 The College Dropout Boom / David Leonhardt 87

7 No Degree, and No Way Back to the Middle / Timothy Egan 105

8 Fifteen Years on the Bottom Rung / Anthony DePalma 111

9 When the Joneses Wear Jeans / Jennifer Steinhauer 134

10 The Five-Bedroom, Six-Figure Rootless Life / Peter T. Kilborn 146

11 Old Nantucket Warily Meets the New / Geraldine Fabrikant 166

12 Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind / David Cay Johnston 182

13 In Fiction, a Long History of Fixation on the Social Gap / Charles McGrath 192

14 Angela Whitiker's Climb / Isabel Wilkerson 202

Encounters with Class 234

My Nanny Was a Dreadful Snob / Christopher Buckley

Downwardly Mobile in Birmingham / Diane McWhorter

From the Bronx to Cornell / Richard Price

At the Top of the Bottom in the Segregated South / David Levering Lewis

We Were Poor, but I Didn't Know It / Linda Chavez

Appendix The New York Times Poll on Class 244.

Notes:

Collected from a series of articles published in the New York Times in the spring of 2005.

ISBN:

0805080554

OCLC:

60835615

Publisher Number:

9780805080551