If you come across this book in a bookstore, I hope you will browse the Prologue, “The Death of Shorty,” and that it will draw you in to the rest of the book. Even if it does not, the story provides a concrete, vivid illustration of all the book’s themes. It shows how complicated and interconnected the issues are, and it reminds readers that the historical and sociological material in the book refers to real people, human beings struggling to survive with some dignity on the mean streets of North Philadelphia and other American cities.I would point readers, too, to the section on the “management of marginalization” in the title chapter. For it highlights aspects of everyday experience whose significance is easy to miss. And it limns modern techniques for keeping the peace in the face of persistent, and growing, inequality. This is an area in which America is a world leader.If you pick up the book, please also browse the Epilogue and think about the wonderful quotation from the brilliant urbanist Anaya Roy with which the book ends. I want readers to understand what the book calls “the existential dilemma of urban studies” and enter the conversation about how we can shape a new narrative that energizes, not depresses, the bright young people who want to help build a better urban future.I want readers to take away at least four things from this book.- An understanding of urban transformation and its consequences. To comprehend the world in which we live we need to toss out older ideas of city, suburb, and urban. The exercise is not just intellectual. It is necessary if we are to develop policies to respond to the situation as it is, not as it was not so very long ago.- An ability to criticize statements that attribute poverty to the failings of individuals. By this point in history, it should be clear that the attribution of poverty to personal defect along with the hoary idea of the undeserving poor are intellectually bankrupt and incapable of pointing the way to effective strategies for substantially reducing the unacceptable extent of poverty in America.- An appreciation of the positive role of government and a healthy skepticism about the ability of privatization and policies based on market-models to solve major social problems. The denigration of government is one of the most corrosive public trends in recent American history. Its ugly consequences are all around us. Without strong, effective government, a vibrant, successful democracy is impossible.- A willingness to reject the idea that there is no alternative. TINA, as the late Daniel Singer called the idea, is a powerful ideological control mechanism for disabling protest and creative thinking about possibilities for change and alternative policies. Alternatives always have existed, as they do today; the question is whether we have the imagination and will to make them happen.