When Work Disappears

When Work Disappears

WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS: THE WORLD OF THE
NEW URBAN POOR, by William Julius Wilson. Knopf,
1996. 352 pp. $26.00.

Some years back Russell Jacoby introduced the term “public intellectual.” He used it to mean the sort of nonacademic, politically concerned, widely read freelance who was typified, in the 1940s, by Dwight Macdonald. Jacoby titled his book The Last Intellectuals. He viewed with alarm the fact that almost all American intellectuals are now on coll...