Ain't No Making It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood by Jay Macleod

Ain't No Making It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood by Jay Macleod Third ed Westview press, 2009 2nd Ed Westview Press, 1995. The first edition (1987) looked at 2 groups of young boys in a poor neighborhood-- a housing project-- and explored why some thought they could make it and other couldn't. The 2nd edition went back and found out that pretty much no one made it. Very depressing, very sociologically rich. I used this in class for years; it really, really got to a lot of the students. The third edition went back for another update on the men. Things got better for many of them. Again very sociologically rich. The amazing thing about my version of the 3rd edition is that when I got it at a sociology conference right when it was released-- the Easterns? ASA? I forget now-- the author was there with a bunch of the men from the book. I got a bunch of them to sign the book and got to tell them about what the book had meant to my students all these years. Very moving.