How the Other Half Works

"Waldinger and Lichter offer a lucid and penetrating look at the micro-social structure of hiring, firing, and earning in the modern, post-industrial economy. This book should be required reading for people who glibly use the term 'free market."'-Douglas S. Massey, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania "In this masterpiece of field research into the social processes that structure America's economy, Waldinger and Lichter unveil the most original and powerful theory ever advanced to explain how "unskilled" immigrants have come to work at remarkably high rates while inner city blacks continue to languish. Like Wilson's When Work Disappears and Massey and Denton's American Apartheid, How the Other Half Works will set the stage for a new era of poverty research. In its focus on Los Angeles as the quintessential suburban metropolis and as an exemplar of multi-ethnic America, it may also one day be seen as the founding text in a new LA School of Urban Sociology."-Mitchell Duneier, author of Sidewalk and Slim's Table