Falling from Grace

Over the last three decades, millions of people have slipped through a loophole in the American dream and become downwardly mobile as a result of downsizing, plant closings, mergers, and divorce: the middle-aged computer executive laid off during an industry crisis, blue-collar workers phased out of the post-industrial economy, middle managers whose positions have been phased out, and once-affluent housewives stranded with children and a huge mortgage as the result of divorce. Anthropologist Katherine S. Newman interviewed a wide range of men, women, and children who experienced a precipitous fall from middle-class status, and her book documents their stories. For the 1999 edition, Newman has provided a new preface and updated the extensive data on job loss and downward mobility in the American middle class, documenting its persistence, even in times of prosperity.

Katherine S. Newman is Ford Foundation Professor of Urban Studies, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and the author of No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (1999), Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream (1994), and Law and Economic Organization (1983).

Preface

1 American Nightmares
2 Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence
3 Rejected Managers and the Culture of Meritocracy
4 The Downwardly Mobile Family
5 Brotherhoods of the Downwardly Mobile
6 Blue-Collar Workers and the Abandonment of Tradition
7 Middle-Class Women in Trouble
8 Falling from Grace
9 Afterword

Appendix
Notes
References
Index