For the first time in over twenty-five years. the issue of poverty -- and our failure to deal with it -- is back at the top of the policy agenda and on the front page of the news. In this magisterial overview social historian Michael B. Katz, examines the ideas and assumptions that have shaped public policy from the sixties War on Poverty to the current war on welfare. Closely argued and lucidly written. The Undeserving Poor transcends the barriers that have channeled the American discussion of poverty and wealth into a narrow, self-defeating course, and points the way to a new, constructive approach to our major social problem. "With the publication of The Undeserving Poor Michael B. Katz is destined to join a select set of brilliant writers who have changed how America thinks about poverty. Like Michael Harrington's The Other America and William Ryan's Blaming the Victim, this new book has the real promise of shattering stereotypes." -- Barry Bluestone. University of Massachusetts at Boston "The Undeserving Poor is likely to become the definitive history of contemporary poverty policy. Not only is Michael B. Katz a fine scholar, but he brings to his subject a sleep empathy for the marginalized and the outcast." -- Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York "Michael B. Katz's book is a broadly conceived and provocative review of America's recent efforts to help the poor and its return to punishing them. His critical analysis of the activities and ideas that fueled both the War on Poverty and its demise deserves the attention not only of academics but also of policymakers and the general reader." -- Herbert J. Gans, Columbia University "Why Katz asks in this clear and persuasive book, do Americans debate poverty in terms of family, race. and culture rather than in the language of inequality, power, and exploitation? His answer is one of the most stunning and masterful assessments in the scholarship of poverty." -- Paul H. Mattingly, New York University