Class Matters

by The New York Times, Bill Keller (Introduction)

The acclaimed New York Times series on social class in America―and its implications for the way we live our lives

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 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 moves 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.

" Class Matters is a beautifully reported, deeply disturbing, portrait of a society bent out of shape by harsh inequalities. Read it and see how you fit into the problem or―better yet―the solution!"
―Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Economics, Politics, School, Social Justice, Class

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 2005

About the author

The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 112 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. Its website receives 30 million unique visitors per month.

Reviews

[Todd N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Class Matters

Just like George Orwell, I am from the upper lower middle class.

This book is a reprint of a series of New York Times articles about class in America. These articles were published during May-June 2005, so they don’t have the trauma of the 2008 Don’t-Call-It-A-Depression-Please running through it.

(One choice pre-2008 quote: "Banks, more confident about measuring risk, now extend credit to low-income families, so that owning a home...is no longer evidence that someone is middle class.")

I’ve read a lot of books about class and wealth in America, because the stories in this one are more personal it caused more reflection on my own experiences and attitudes towards class and wealth in America. Because it’s a reprint from a newspaper the writing style is simpler than other non-fiction that I’m used to reading, so it was easier to read through quickly.

A theme that I noticed running through different articles is the importance of “fitting in” as a class marker. For example, one woman remembers being baffled by the toothpicks in a club sandwich at a luncheon so she pretended to be ill rather than admit not knowing how to eat it. In another article, a nurse finds it very difficult to socialize with her co-workers after hours because her impoverished background is completely different from theirs.

I can relate to this feeling of not fitting in. It's the leitmotif in the opera of my life. The first time I was on a plane (at age 22) I passed on the dinner because I had no money with me and didn’t realize that it was included as part of the ticket. I also remember having dinner with a girlfriend and her parents shortly after moving to Kensington, CA from Toledo and being completely unable to follow the conversation. And my early attempts at “business casual” are fortunately pre-social media and best forgotten, though I remember one co-worker pulling me aside to ask me why I “dress like a f-cking restaurant owner.”

But that's all behind me now, and I’ve gone from the upper lower middle class to the lower upper middle classes with all its attendant privileges or at least sense of entitlement. Like the Cake song goes, his cigarette is burning but he never seems to ash.

Anyway, I copied and pasted the table of contents, so that I can add my notes and impressions of the articles.

Introduction by Bill Keller
I can totally tell from these few short pages that Mr. Keller would rather spend his time writing think pieces than managing people.

Shadowy Lines That Still Divide by Janny Scott and David Leonhardt
This article sort of annoyed me with how it conflated income with class. Wealth is such a more accurate marker. If you have enough wealth, it’s possible to structure things so that you only take the income that you need. But then there are high-income families who are basically living paycheck-to-paycheck. (We all know a few, though not exactly who they are.) But these stats are a very interesting look at pre-recession America.

Life at the Top in American Isn't Just Better, It's Longer by Janny Scott
Wealth definitely correlates to the quality of care that you get, but as with any complex system I would say that the amount of intelligence and savviness you have probably has more (probably much more) to do with it. Still the differences in outcome is very shocking.

A Marriage of Unequals by Tamar Lewin
This was interesting because I generally feel like marriages between classes are basically doomed because their values are so fundamentally different. In the case described in the article, the wife had so much money that they could just paper over any differences in values.

It would have been more interesting to see a marriage between say a lower-middle class guy and a middle-class woman, where the money will be much tighter. I've seen several of those implode, unfortunately.

Up from the Holler: Living in Two Worlds, at Home in Neither by Tamar Lewin
I have no memory of reading this. Probably blocked it out due to trauma.

On a Christian Mission to the Top by Laurie Goodstein and David D. Kirkpatrick
This was really interesting to me. It never occurred to me that my disdain for fundamentalist Christians might be mixed up with my classism as well.

Also, I never knew about the whole Episcopalian Church as a marker of high status before, but since reading this book I’ve already noticed several references to it already.

I’m so tuned out of the whole religion thing that this kind of stuff just goes over my head, but since this country was founded by abused Puritans who then grew up to become abusers I should probably pay more attention.

The College Dropout Boom by David Leonhardt
I found the reference to “college boy” as a taunt in working class neighborhoods quite "triggering" as they say on Reddit. When I came back from my first semester at Purdue I brought a back window sticker for a close relative's truck, and when that person thought I was out of earshot I overheard that person saying, “There’s no f-ing way I’m putting that on my truck.” The humiliation of being associated with a college was too great to contemplate.

How's that unemployment and opioid-related constipation working out for you?

No Degree, and No Way Back to the Middle by Timothy Egan
What? They can’t retrain them all to be long haul drivers?

Fifteen Years on the Bottom Rung by Anthony DePalma
I have no memory of reading this.

When the Joneses Wear Jeans by Jennifer Steinhauer
I can totally relate to this because I live in Palo Alto, where the status markers are completely inverted. Someone in flip-flops and a worn t-shirt at Whole Foods is probably a billionaire. You can’t really tell until you see what kind of car someone gets into. Though billionaire car doors open a certain way.

I always thought the trick in retail was to look at shoes, but I can see how this would have limitations these days.

A good status-marker dad joke in Palo Alto is to tell your kids to call the police if they ever see a domestic car parked on your street. But a few years ago I consulted for a company where everyone was pretty aggressively from MIT. After that I decided to go nearly full Midwest. (Never go full Midwest.)

So now I wear a Detroit Tigers baseball cap and drive a Jeep Cherokee in my typical passive aggressive attempt to shake my inverted snobby fist at the corrupt, inverted snobby class status markers. Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.

The Five-Bedroom, Six Figure Rootless Life by Peter T. Kilborn
Oh my God, this sounds like the worst nightmare that I could ever dream up even after an evening of Percocet and Stephen King movies. Whenever I deal with a VP at a bank or a customer, I’ll keep in mind that they have a horrible spouse and kids like the ones in this article waiting for them in their horrible prefab house and that they are probably at lacrosse practice. Also: ALL THE KIDS’ NAMES START WITH “K”! ALL THE KIDS’ NAMES START WITH “K”! ALL THE KIDS’ NAMES START WITH “K”!

I must admit that I’ve taken tours of developments like this before, and it is very tempting to live in a place like this. It’s very safe and spacious with good schools. And I appreciate the way that people sort themselves into neighborhoods based on the homes' starting prices. But I’d fit in there even worse than I do in Palo Alto, and that's saying something.

These are the kind of people who ask you “What church do you belong to?” instead of “What start up do you work for?” Savages.

Old Nantucket Warily Meets the New by Geraldine Fabrikant
Old money vs. new money. Not very interesting if you don't live in New England, frankly. The old money people sound kind of tired, and the new money people sound like they have lots of energy and ideas (though maybe a less taste). I wonder if this is how the Vikings viewed the monks ensconced in their monasteries in Ireland.

Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind by David Cay Johnston
Economists are kind of annoying because they take every naturally occurring phenomenon they encounter and try to jam it into a normal distribution. What's being described here sort of sounds like a Zipf or maybe a power distribution. Maybe if they taught econ majors a few more probability distributions it might prevent once-in-a-hundred-year crashes from happening every few decades. Just a thought.

In Fiction, a Long History of Fixation on the Social Gap by Charles McGrath
I felt Picketty had more interesting analysis of 19C literature and economics.

Angela Whitiker's Climb by Isabel Wilkerson
This article was really interesting because it pretty much jibes with what I believe is necessary for jumping up America’s super-greasy class ladder:
1. A high IQ — At least 1.5 standard deviations above the norm. If you weren’t born with this natural ability, just get on food stamps and re-share Facebook memes about states rights for the rest of your life. There's no shame in it, clearly.
2. A desire and ability to fit in — A pretty clear sub theme of this book but often overlooked step. This is deceptively hard to do and usually means leaving family behind and ditching old friends. Jumping up a class is basically like becoming a citizen of a new country. I plan to complete this step by my late sixties.
3. Working hard — This is rare, especially when there is an absence of encouragement or positive feedback. Deferred gratification isn’t exactly something our culture celebrates.

So Ms. Whitiker is probably 1 in 1,000 to 2,500 if you calculate the odds.

I thought it interesting that an aunt was trying to steal her Dove soap right from her pantry. I had a girlfriend in a similar situation. She graduated from a UC and was making really good money as a developer, so her less motivated siblings expected checks from her. One time her sister and drug-addicted fiancee showed up at her apartment, demanded a check, and then left. At that point I knew that we could never be married. We broke up for other reasons, but I knew if we got married that I'd be supporting her family too.

My Nanny Was a Dreadful Snob by Christopher Buckley
Awesome story. Servants are the biggest snobs should be written on our money.

[Piper Mount · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is boring. It seems to be written for the naive Americans that believe class doesn't matter - but will they really even think of picking this book up? 

I find the stories tedious. They lose their power when filtered through a reporter and not told firsthand. There are so many better ways to understand the lives of people who are in different classes from you. Mostly, go out and meet them.

I was hoping there would be a "so what" to this book. Yes, class really does matter. But simply pointing it out isn't going to fix anything. Let's create a class-less society. Radical wealth redistribution. Let's do a poll and see what Americans think the solution to inequality is. Geeze. Anything. We get that class matters, so now what?

[Jerry Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

NYT page turning journalism luminates class difference in the US, but honestly, its themes could have been summed in a few charts.

Insights gained:
Class mobility is low; immigrants have it worst. Accumulated wealth and close-knit community leadership makes this wave of immigrants slower to move into the middle class than in previous centuries (within 3 genera).
Class distinction is blurred by 1. democratization of tech, 2. marketing of subluxury goods. i.e. international budget travel - Bali, cruise ships, and 3. modesty of superelite CEOs Zuckerberg and Gates, and I almost forgot 4. trillions in student debt.
As a result ^, high status symbols are shifting from consumer goods to comparative personal services (nannys, community service, and vacations)

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Same old, same old! This book was published in 2005 and discusses many topics that are still topical today: the super-rich getting much richer, the failure of middle class wages to grow, the worsening economic inequality, the hoarding of opportunities, the increasing immobility of our society. All and all very sad. It makes me thankful for what I have.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If Gatsby were to come back today, he would come back as Donald Trump and would want a date not with Daisy but with Britney" (200). So, parts of this book are now dated (no pun intended), but overall, the information in this book is excellent and fascinating.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know. The articles were published something like 12 years ago so, especially post-recession, they feel a bit dated. But it was fine. I would have loved to have read a series of more recent reporting.

[sleeps9hours · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was my first in a recent exploration of class differences. It was interesting, but since it was originally written by NYTimes reporters for a series of newspaper articles, it wasn’t as meaty as I was hoping for. The stats and research results were few. Instead the reporters did the research, but substituted interviews and stories with people whom they saw as representative of the trends. Fine for reporting, not as fine for social science.

Main points:

One way to think of a person’s position in society is to imagine a hand of cards. Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, income, occupation, and wealth, the four commonly used criteria for gauging class. Face cards in a few categories may land a player in the upper middle class. At first, a person’s class is his parents’ class. Later, he may pick up a new hand of his own; it is likely to resemble that of his parents, but not always.

At a time when, by many measures, class seems less and less a force in American life, it has become more so in some of the areas that matter most.

The appearance of class differences is disappearing, at a time when the actual wealth gap is increasing. This is partly due to lower and middle class people putting themselves in debt to buy things that make them appear wealthier than they are. It’s also due to people living in neighborhoods segregated by wealth. We mostly interact with others like ourselves. If the poor are “invisible”, the ultra-rich are even more so. They segregate themselves, living in their huge mansion retreats, flying on private jets, vacationing in uber-exclusive locales. They have assistants to do all of their mundane errands like shopping, so they never need to enter into the general public. Aside from the 3% of ultra-rich who are celebrities, most stay out of the spotlight.

Class mobility, the ability to move from the class you’re born into to another class, has decreased over the past 30 years.

At 250 of the most selective colleges in the country, the proportion of students from upper-income families has grown. Though campuses are more racially diverse, they are less economically diverse.

Class differences in health and lifespan are widening instead of shrinking.

Since the 70’s, people have become less likely to marry across class barriers.

[Melissa Bond · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me, the book just really skimmed the surface when it came to the thoughts of the upper class, and really spent too much time on a select sample of the middle and lower class. If you are going to write a book about why each class matters and the lifestyles of the varying levels of class, then you must include a balanced portrayal for each. That is where this book fell short for me. Even the surveys were so contradictory and too vague to get a clear picture of what class means to each individual. Frankly, it just seemed class cannot be determined scientifically, but rather individually. Wealthy to one person is not necessarily the same for another. The stories of those selected where interesting, but predictable and nothing out of the ordinary. I think NYT needs to revisit this heavy topic after the recession has ended. The class system today has changed so dramatically that the facts presented in the book are really now obsolete.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The kind of articles that really make you think. It's hard to pinpoint what class really means, and how it changes due to where you live and over time. There's a great chapter in here about a lawyer from Kentucky and how she doesn't feel like she fits into either the class she was born into or the class she's in now, and there's another great one about the new super wealthy on Nantucket. It almost makes you sympathize with the old money people, crazy as that seems. Oh, and there's another great bit about that class of upper middle class people who get moved around the country doing business jobs, and living in ritzy suburbs that all blend into sameness.
Really, the more I think about this, everybody should read this book. This is an important book. People should be thinking about this stuff.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains one of the most well-written and clearest essays I have ever read, maybe in general but certainly depicting issues of class. The article in question is about 3 people, of 3 classes, who each have a heart attack and the various factors that contribute to the success (or lack thereof) of the care they receive during and after. It really pinpoints some major, often-ignored issues of class, without demonizing any one group. For example, it's clear that all 3 have doctors who care a lot about their recovery, but the differing realities of the way each gets their health care and the steps they must go through affects their doctors' abilities to accomplish their job. This book is worth it for just that essay alone, but there are others that are excellent as well.

[Sarah]

Fans of anthology reading, particularly memoir-personal-is-political style writing will probably enjoy this, but agree with the commenter who said that this doesn't exactly break any new ground. If you've never thought about class in America, this might shake you up, but for those of us who have, it was a bit boring and I'll admit to having skimmed some of the more boring essays. Also, a mere 4 years after it was published, it is starting to appear a bit dated. In particular the essay where the authors mentioned off hand that sub prime mortgages were helping low income families own homes nearly had me spit out my coffee.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a journalist, I think I enjoyed this more than the average person, but the series of articles in this collection were eye-opening. It discussed class from health, relationship and career perspectives, but the major conclusion seemed to be: Americans are not as able to attain a higher class than they once were. My only problem was that it kept defining class as something more than socioeconomical, but it never quite defined what else it might be, at least not clearly.

[Miri Villerius]

A good primer for the state of class in America. A mix of interesting case studies and statistics that spell out the range of classes in America that are not all given due consideration.

[Zade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although it is now several years out of date, the patterns described in this book still hold true and the human faces it puts on people of all classes remain an engaging reminder of how much people have in common, no matter where they fall on the class scale. It's not always pleasant reading--the inequities described make even this lower-middle-class reader uncomfortably aware of her privileges--and the statistical chapters can be dry even as they are informative--but the education is worth the time and effort.

I recommend this book for anyone who thinks America has achieved a classless society. It will also be of interest for readers of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, and books like Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America and $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. In fact, I recommend all of the above-mentioned books for anyone interested in the topic of class and for anyone who, like me, grew up securely positioned in the middle class or above.

[Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading the book "Class Matters" by the New York Times, I was really able to understand a new sense of the different levels of classism that I previously couldn't fully comprehend. Throughout the book, different classes are given detail into what life is like within those certain social classes. The book first brought up the "Super Rich" Upper Class which was shown off by having 45 foot yachts and their own island off the coast of cape cod, Massachusetts. This made me realize how luxurious some are living and how spread out our classes really are. These people have things that most Americans could only dream of, making me really reflect on how my life must look dirt poor to some of these families. The next set of things brought up was the middle class and their lifestyle. I feel like I can personally relate to most of the things brought up in this part of the book. One thing that was presented was the idea that middle class parents really want to set their children up to be more successful than they were. This struck me dead on as my parents treat me the same way when is comes to setting me up for the future. The part that opened my eyes the most though was the experiences of the lower class. Seeing that most of these kids don't get the same opportunities as other students to goto college or even have that dream to one day be there really makes me feel lucky and humble to be in the place I am right now with the tools to succeed in life which others don't have. Overall, I feel like this book is very recommendable to people because of its exposure it gives to people about the others around them and their everyday lives .

[CTEP]

I read Class Matters, a collection of reports on class and the effects of class on various aspects of life from correspondents of The New York Times. Topics included marriage between different social classes, the near impossible task of going back to school to break out of a poor class, and how the new rich class is different than the old rich class. Reading the book allowed for the exploration of a wide range of social classes and the different effects those classes can have in the lives of the people they claim. Prior to reading this book I would have classified my family as middle class, but after reading I realize we're substantially above that. At the same time I am solidly located in the poorest class, but with the enormous advantage of an education already completed through college. AmeriCorps members absolutely should read this book. No matter what class you're coming from or headed to I think it is important to acknowledge the advantages and disadvantages that were conferred upon us simply by being born in a different part of town. The book was engaging and varied in it's coverage; mortgages might not interest you so much but the next essay will be about something completely different.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Class Matters (Paperback)
by The New York Times

from the library




Contents:
Shadowy lines that still divide / Janny Scott, David Leonhardt -- Life at the top in America isn't just better, it's longer / Janny Scott -- A marriage of unequals / Tamar Lewin -- Up from the holler : living in two worlds, at home in neither / Tamar Lewin -- On a Christian mission to the top / Laurie Goodstein, David D. Kirkpatrick -- The college dropout boom / David Leonhardt -- No degree, and no way back to the middle / Timothy Egan -- Fifteen years on the bottom rung / Anthony DePalma -- When the Joneses wear jeans / Jennifer Steinhauer -- The five-bedroom, six-figure rootless life / Peter T. Kilborn -- Old Nantucket warily meets the new / Geraldine Fabrikant -- Richest are leaving even the rich far behind / David Cay Johnston -- In fiction, a long history of fixation on the social gap / Charles McGrath -- Angela Whitiker's climb / Isabel Wilkerson -- Encounters with class -- Appendix. The New York Times poll on class.

[Tricia Kuivinen]

Found this is a "little free library" and read it with interest; being pre-Great Recession, it offered some seemingly outdated interpretations for the current "equity climate." What was missing in the book for me was any discussion of just how much the cost of living has soared, esp. in certain American cities where immigrants congregate, which of course directly affects their ability to get ahead. Also lacking was how certain values- whether transmitted across classes or held within- play a role in helping people fail or succeed, and/or move between classes. "Hard work" was revisited again and again as something that "wasn't enough anymore" and the undercurrent of the book was that "the American dream" was probably out of reach of most current immigrants and poor Americans. Predictably, "taxing the rich/upper class" was the solution of choice. One thing was clear among many of the people described; many of them faced co-occurring obstacles to getting ahead that would be hard for anyone to overcome.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Parsing class in America was always going to be tough, and presenting thorny class issues from a newspaper’s supposedly neutral standpoint must be even tougher, but even bearing that in mind, this book falls short.

This may be because the material hasn’t aged very well, or because when you’re talking about what class looks like in America without much discussion (or fingerpointing) of how it came to be that way, you’re only delivering half a story.

Presenting class as a neutral force, which randomly affects people in different ways, rather than talking about tax breaks for the wealthy and whatnot, inevitably means the stories will fall flat. You’re saying the what, but not the why.

This book looked to take on class as a coup for the newspaper (and the intro is full of smug self pats on the back from the editor) but the stories they told weren’t brave or surprising, because they weren’t fully examined. Class isn’t just a neutral force.

[Sarah Ewald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked a paperback of this up at a book sale. Published in 2005, so statistics are somewhat dated, but what interested me are the stories, people stories. This was a series of articles written by the staff of the New York Times, so that I trust their reporting. Stories of young and old, rich and poor, and those in between. I found it very hard to relate to the high-end job transferees in Alpharetta, Georgia or the plight of the moneyed rich on Nantucket Island; and found the story that contrasted the Greek restaurant owner who came in the 1950's with the Hispanic restaurant employee who came in the 2000s very interesting in light of today's immigration crisis. Some chapters are statistic-related, which, all these years later, mean nothing. I would have loved an update on the people in these stories, 14 years later. Worth reading to see how far we have, or have not, come.

[Edgar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is depressing and distressing but some parts are quite enlighting and deserve special attention. One of the messages in this book is that class is not just about money or power. It is more of a set of untangible resources that mostly come from within the family. And this is why giving away money and scholarships to low income students just doesn't work and statistics show that these students quite often drop out from college in a early stage of their education. Teaching values, setting of priorities and habits are more important than giving away money. On a positve note is the fact that in the recent years the number of people with high purchase power has increased notably, which in turn brings new posibilities to satisfy the comsumption hunger of this demograpy.

[Avina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book shows the division between the social classes in America, and I feel it is very accurate. It shows the devastating lifestyle of those in the lower class and how unlikely it is to find a decent job without a proper education or support from family. It also shows the privileges those in the upper class receive and how much they exploit them without realizing how lucky they are. Because this book is a compilation of articles, I felt that some of the authors were biased towards the lower class and completely brought the upper class down. However, it does show the hardships people are facing in modern day America.

[Daniel]

I didn't not enjoy this book because I would have the same set up for every chapter. It would start off by giving you the wealthier side of a story; then they would describe the same situation through a lower class person who had the same experience. The rest of the book was quite the same but it would alternate from the upper class in one chapter, and a lower class citizen in another. there was however a couple places where the book talked about how it would be like to live in the Unites states as an immigrant. Other than my personal preference to the book, it was very well organized and used a lot of evidence to back up their claims.

[Maryann]

I found this book very interesting. It addresses many topics like...the historical backstory of the Ivies; how large numbers of Evangelicals are now charging forward in the U.S. attending elite universities and forming their own social clubs for moral reasons; how universities in the U.S. are now offering grants to students bridging the gap of the rich and the poor; how UVA is a front runner in increasing financial aid to middle income students to lessen tuition costs and eliminate payback loans; why parents should encourage their children to "stick it out" no matter what in the first year of college; the future of Affirmative Action, and so much more. Highly recommend.

[Joinville Naoum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that I found the book interesting as it was my first time to read something concerned with Economics. The book was so far clear to me, however, I found too much unfamiliar vocabulary. It was easy to conclude from the first 3-5 stories what the book was talking about and what the reporters tried to illustrate. The stories overall were enjoyable and detailed about the class distinctions. I found the story of the 2 immigrants and Ms. Whitiker who had 5 children from different fathers very true in the American society. Overall, the book was easy to read and understand.

[Amira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and thought provoking. Stories make you think about class by stepping out of your comfort zone. Presents facts in a very clear way. It was required for my Economics class but I honestly enjoyed reading it.

This book is something everyone should read. It really illustrates the class inequalities in America. The personal stories of people from different classes really paints a picture of how class is inherited and how it is hard to change your class from the one you were raised in, however upward mobility is possible.

[Alastair Fyfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the analysis of class-consciousness. The journalistic writing is on par, as well does an excellent job of illustrating the various class structures within America society. I enjoy how the book didn't have a political bias and presented the destruction of class-consciousness in American society; informing and education its audience.

I hope that social-scientist will publish accessible representation of class mobility on a yearly basis.

[Anna L · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book raises a lot of valid questions about class, but it feels very dated. I remember reading the series in NYT when they first came out, and being engaged with the theme. However, I feel the country economic situation has worsened enough since 2005 that the interviews and class snapshots of 2005 ring hollow. Yet another reminder to myself that probably, waiting 8 years to read a non-fiction book is not wise.

[Ink · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book brought up excellent points but the fact that it had multiple authors made the writing style inconsistent and choppy. One would explain a situation well and the other would just state what they were told. Also the fact that it was journalists writing these instead of the people whose experiences are written about took a little away from the authenticity of the stories; it would have been much more impactful if they wrote their own stories.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays by correspondents of The New York Times exploring how issues such as health care and education plays a part in ones place in society. Very eye opening. In one chapter, the college dropout boom is explored and evidence is given how this affects ones social mobility and chances to move ahead. This book was read for a college English Composition class.