Includes bibliographical references.

Contents: Corporate power: Getting corporations off the public dole -- Smoke screen -- The Grand bazaar -- Missing from the news -- Economic crisis: Losing out to Mexico -- When you stop, you die: the human toll of unemployment -- The Company as family, no more -- The License for financial devastation -- Inequality: Top heavy -- Doing poorly: the real income of American children in comparative perspective -- Day by day: the lives of homeless women -- The Underclass label -- Racism: American apartheid -- Measuring employment discrimination -- Immigration to the burn zone -- Asian Americans: the myth of the model minority -- Sexism: The Wages of the backlash -- Learning silence -- "Fetal rights": a new assault on feminism -- The Family: Families on the fault line -- Time for parenting -- Till death do us part -- The Environment: Why we have failed -- Environmental racism -- The Heat is on -- The Workplace: How labor fares in advanced economies -- The Forgotten Americans -- The Political economy and urban racial tensions -- Health and welfare: Excess mortality in Harlem -- The Medically uninsured: will they always be with us? -- Health care in crisis: does Canada have the answer? -- So How did i get here? growing up on welfare -- The Schools: Life on the Mississippi: east st. Louis, Missouri -- The Myth of public school costs -- The Great school sell-off -- Crime and justice: Crime and work -- "Three strikes and you're out": a debate -- Young black Americans and the criminal justice system -- Workaday world, crack economy -- Epilogue: Jobs for all -- Planning for economic conversion -- Seize the day -- A Global new deal.

Presents articles on such social problems as corporate power, economic crisis, sexism, racism, and inequality.