America's Poor and the Great Recession

The Kristin Seefeldt and John Graham primer on the state of America's poor in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 cuts through Beltway theater and provides a clear picture of the magnitude of poverty of the United States as well as the patchwork nature of social services targeting the poor.

* Journal of Policy Analysis and Management *

All in all, Seefeldt and Graham fulfill their primary goal since they do manage to present a book which can be used as a 'readable [] supplementary text in undergraduate and graduate courses' . . . on poverty and social policy in the U.S. at present. Moreover, precisely because the work offers substantial evidence and thoroughly systematized data about these social phenomena but also provokes questions and debates on these pressing political issues, it may well serve as a guide for future research and may equally prove instrumental in triggering novel responses by both researchers and policy makers.

* European Journal of American Studies *

Kristen S. Seefeldt and John D. Graham have produced a thorough and enlightening survey of the impact and legacy of the Great Recession on low-income Americans, and the 'safety net' of philanthropic and government programmes on which they rely. . . . [Their] prose remains accessible and readable even whilst negotiating an array of statistics and complex layers of state and federal government programmes.

* Journal of American Studi