Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality
Patrick Sharkey

“Patrick Sharkey’s Stuck in Place is one of those rare books that will become a standard reference for students and scholars of inequality. Examining longitudinal data over a period of four decades, Sharkey provides compelling arguments on how inequality clustered in a social setting can be addressed with a durable urban policy agenda. This important and incredibly perceptive book is a must-read.”—William Julius Wilson

Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect
Robert J. Sampson

“A must-read for almost all sociologists and demographers, and especially important for urbanists. Though I have written numerous book reviews and read countless others, this essay is by far the hardest one I’ve been asked to do. It is hard for two reasons: first, there is so much excellent material in Great American City to write about that it is hard to know where to begin; and second, the book is so good it is difficult to keep from being overly effusive in praising it.”—Nancy Denton, City and Community

On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City
Alice Goffman

“On the Run tells, in gripping, hard-won detail, what it’s like to be trapped on the wrong side of the law with no way out—the situation of so many young Black Americans today. A brilliant fieldworker and a smart analyst of what she saw and heard, Goffman has made a lasting contribution to our understanding of the administration of the law, urban life and race relations, in a book you will never forget reading.”—Howard Becker

Black Picket Fences, Second Edition: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class
Mary Pattillo

“Few studies offer extensions to an existing body of research in a manner that is both paradigm shifting and enriching to the social sciences as a whole.… Pattillo has succeeded in doing both. Her analysis of the black middle class revives the tradition of community studies in American sociology while skillfully shifting the dialogue concerning the inner-city from its focus on social pathologies of the poor to a more holistic discussion of stratification and social interaction.”—Robert Mark Silverman, Critical Sociology