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WHATEVER IT TAKES
By: Paul Tough
Geoffrey Canada's Quest To Change Harlem And America
Houghton Mifflin
August 2008
On Sale: August 12, 2008
Featuring: Geoffry Canada
304 pages
ISBN: 0618569898
EAN: 9780618569892
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
What would it take?
That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor childrenβnot one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children's Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their livesβtheir schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.
Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but also of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.
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