Mr. Reagan's economic policy suggests that the new Administration will try to cut the social programs that provide support for the unemployed and underemployed...because he believes that there are so many unemployed in the United States because life is too easy and people do not take work seriously. This book will help him correct this misconception. It will tell him something about the experience of unemployment and the hardship, self-doubt, and anxiety of those who are without work in the United States today.
   --Francis Fox Piven, New York Times Book Review

A guide to understanding the political consequences of being economically deprived, in general, and being unemployed, in particular. Schlozman and Verba have drawn their map with such care and skill that we will all profit from studying their results and the process of exploration as well...The data for the study are drawn from two parallel telephone surveys of the metropolitan work force which yielded 1,370 respondents of whom 571 were jobless...In the compass of this brief review I cannot adequately reflect the scope of the analyses undertaken...This book is an important sign of progress in the study of political behavior.
   --Richard A. Brody, American Political Science Review

A wide-ranging book about the relationship between class and politics in the United States...In exemplary fashion, the authors bring empirical data to bear on several controversial theoretical questions that have implications for a general understanding of the nature of American politics.
   --Harold M. Waller, Canadian Journal of Political Science

Kay Lehman Schlozman is Professor of Political Science, Boston College.

Read More by Kay Lehman Schlozman:

• Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics
• The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation