American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare

New York: Viking, 2004. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. x, 422 p. Illustrations. Timeline. Notes. Index. Signed by author. DJ has very slight wear, soiling and edge wear. Inscription on half title. Handwritten note (signed) also laid in. A critically acclaimed reporter for The New York Times provides an in-depth study of the conflict between government social policy and the realities of life in post-welfare America, focusing on the lives of three women in a single extended family. Jason DeParle is a reporter for The New York Times and has written extensively about poverty and immigration. His book, American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Helen Bernstein Award from the New York City Library. He was an Emerson Fellow at New America. From 1983 to 1986, Mr. DeParle was a staff writer at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. There he covered criminal court and the district attorney's office. From 1982 to 1983, he was a reporter-researcher and staff writer at The New Republic in Washington. Bill Clinton's drive to ``end welfare'' sent nine million women and children streaming from the rolls. In this masterful work, New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer finalist Jason DeParle cuts between the mean streets of Milwaukee and the corridors of Washington to produce the definitive account. As improbable as fiction, and equally fast-paced, this classic of literary journalism has captured the acclaim of the Left and Right. At the heart of the story are three cousins, inseparable at the start but launched on differing arcs. Leaving welfare, Angie puts her heart in her work. Jewell bets on an imprisoned man. Opal guards a tragic secret that threatens her kids and her life. DeParle traces back their family story six generations to slavery and weaves poor people, politicians, reformers, and rogues into a spellbinding epic. At times the very idea of America seemed on trial: we live in a country that likes to believe anyone can make it, yet generation after generation some families don't. To read American Dream is to understand why.