Chicago Public Housing and the Present Situation at Henry Horner Homes

The Chicago Reporter: Covering Race and Poverty in Chicago since 1972.
Current issue.
Back issues.

Dreier, Peter, and David Moberg. "Moving from the 'Hood: The Mixed Success of Integrating Suburbia." The American Prospect, no. 24 (Winter 1995): 75-79.

Oldweiler, Cory. "Cabrini Changes Come All Too Slowly." The Chicago Reporter, March 1998.

Oldweiler, Cory. "William P. Wilen: Going to Bat for Public Housing Residents." The Chicago Reporter, September 1998.

Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. "An Invisible Community: Inside Chicago's Public Housing." The American Prospect, no. 34 (September-October 1997): 35-40.


Narratives of the Lives of Children in Environments of Extreme Adversity

Coyle, Daniel. Hardball: A Season in the Projects. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1993.

Dash, Leon. Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America. New York: Basic Books, 1996.

Jones, LeAlan. Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago. New York: Scribner, 1997.

Kotlowitz, Alex. The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America’s Dilemma. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1998.

Kozol, Jonathan. Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children & the Conscience of a Nation. New York: Crown, 1995.

Kozol, Jonathan. Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools. New York: New American Library, 1985.

Kozol, Jonathan. Rachel and her Children: Homeless Families in America. New York: Crown Publishers, 1988.

Lemann, Nicholas. The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1991.

Liebow, Elliot. Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967.

Suskind, Ron. A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.


Narratives of Low Income Households Struggling to Make Ends Meet

Edin, Kathryn, and Laura Lein. Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low Wage Work. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997.

Harrington, Michael. The Other America: Poverty in the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Lewis, Oscar. La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty--San Juan and New York.. New York: Random House, 1966.

Sidel, Ruth. Keeping Women and Children Last: America’s War on the Poor. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.

Zucchino, David. Myth of the Welfare Queen: A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist's Portrait of Women on the Line. New York: Scribner, 1997.


Progress of African-Americans Toward Achieving the American Dream

Clemetson, Lynette. "Trying to Close the Achievement Gap." Newsweek (June 7, 1999).

Cose, Ellis. "The Good News about Black America." Newsweek (June 7, 1999): 30-40.

"Feeling Better About the Future." Newsweek (June 7, 1999).

Figueroa, Ana. "'Improvement Is a Myth'." Newsweek (June 7, 1999).

Graham, Lawrence Otis. "Living in a Class Apart: The Separate World of America's Black Elite." U.S. News & World Report, 126, (February 15, 1999): 48.

McCormick, John. "'Change Has Taken Place'." Newsweek (June 7, 1999).

"Moving Forward, But Still Behind." Newsweek (June 7, 1999).

Thernstrom, Stephan, and Abigail Thernstrom. America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
PBS interview with David Gergen and the authors, November 11, 1997.


The Status of Race Relations in America

Hacker, Andrew. Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. New York: Scribner, 1992.

Shipler, David. A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Wilson, William Julius. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Wilson, William Julius. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Knopf, 1996.


Note: For more suggested readings, see also bibliographies compiled by Audreye E. Johnson and Peter Coclanis and Jerma Jackson

For more information about the Summer Reading Program, contact the Orientation Office at 919-962-8521.

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Last revised: July 21, 1999