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Simon & Schuster
March 2015
On Sale: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 1476769893
EAN: 9781476769899
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. Itβs the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe inβa nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last twenty-five years we have seen a disturbing βopportunity gapβ emerge. Americans have always believed in equality of opportunity, the idea that all kids, regardless of their family background, should have a decent chance to improve their lot in life. Now, this central tenet of the American dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was. Robert Putnamβabout whom The Economist said, βhis scholarship is wide-ranging, his intelligence luminous, his tone modest, his prose unpretentious and frequently funnyββoffers a personal but also authoritative look at this new American crisis. Putnam begins with his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. By and large the vast majority of those studentsββour kidsββwent on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have had harder lives amid diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, drawing on a formidable body of research done especially for this book. Our Kids is a rare combination of individual testimony and rigorous evidence. Putnam provides a disturbing account of the American dream that should initiate a deep examination of the future of our country.
 Media BuzzPBS News Hour - March 19, 2015
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