A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife And Beyond in the Inner City

by Katherine S. Newman

An original look at urban aging by the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize winner.

In a book that Robert B. Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, called "provocative and insightful ….combining revealing details about specific people with thoughtful analysis of the trends that have shaped their lives," Katherine S. Newman, former dean of social sciences at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and award-winning author of No Shame in My Game , exposes a growing but largely invisible group of the aging urban underclass.

While an increasing portion of the U.S. population is about to retire—the number of Americans over age sixty-five is expected to double to seventy million in the next thirty years—the experience of middle and old age, as Newman shows, differs dramatically for whites and minorities, for the middle class and the poor, and for those living in the suburbs versus the city. Focusing on the lives of elderly African Americans and Latinos in pockets of New York City where wages are low, crime is often high, and the elderly have few support systems they can rely on, A Different Shade of Gray provides "a well-documented portrait of a little-examined group" ( Kirkus Reviews ).

306 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Katherine Newman is Professor of Sociology and James Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Author of several books on middle class economic instability, urban poverty, and the sociology of inequality, she previously taught at the University of California (Berkeley), Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton.

Reviews

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

really powerful nonfiction book about aging minorities in urban america. newman draws heavily on the concepts of cumulative disadvantage and the political economy of aging, though the book never becomes excessively theoretical. the topic's not for everyone, but i enjoyed it.