Dr. William Julius Wilson, Harvard University, Says:

"Scott J. Myers-Lipton has compiled an impressive array of articles on the social context of poverty in the United States and on the various plans and proposals to alleviate human suffering. His unique volume could become a standard reference not only for scholars who study poverty, but also for policymakers and citizens seeking realistic solutions."
 

Dr. J. Larry Brown,
(former  director, Center of Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis)

Harvard University, Says:
 

At a time in which scholarly policy work often has become divorced from the acute reality of pain and suffering, Myers-Lipton has delivered up a treatise that harkens back to Michael Harrington's moving wake-up call, "The Other America."
 

Dr. Charles Lemert, Wesleyan University, Says:
 

"Social Solutions to Poverty: America’s Struggle to Build a Just Society is one of those rare books that should be bought, read, kept, and used again and again.  It is not only an unsettling story of poverty and the attempts to relieve it, but a reference work that teachers, students, and serious thinkers of whatever station will want to keep close at hand.”

 The Book

For the first time, the voices of famous and lesser known figures in America’s  quest to reduce poverty are collected in a historical anthology.  The book, which includes social commentary, follows one theme--the social solution to poverty: 

•  from Thomas Paine’s agrarian justice to Josiah Quincy’s proposal for the construction of poorhouses;

•  from the Freedmen’s Bureau to Sitting Bull’s demand for money and supplies;

•  from Coxey’s army of the unemployed to Jane Addams's Hull House;

•  from the Civil Works Administration to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for
an Economic Bill of Rights; and

•  from William Julius Wilson’s universal program of reform to George Bush’s armies of compassion.