Volume 29, Number 13 · August 12, 1982
The Lower Depths
By Andrew Hacker
The Underclass
by Ken Auletta
Random House, 348 pp., $17.50
Shopping Bag Ladies: Homeless Women Speak About Their Lives
by Ann Marie Rousseau
Pilgrim Press, 160 pp., $16.95; $9.95 (paper)
Recipient Characteristics Study: Aid to Families with Dependent Children Administration Office of Research and Statistics
US Department of Health and Human Services, Social Security
64 pp., $2.25
Marx and Engels called them 'social scum.' For Alexis de Tocqueville they were 'rabble' who, Thomas Jefferson had said, 'add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.' They peopled the novels of Balzac and Dickens, and were called 'the dangerous classes.' Nowadays we tend to be less judgmental. Hence Ken Auletta's use of the term 'underclass' to describe our current version of this historic stratum.
Review, 6927 words
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