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Book Cover for: Who We Are Now: The Changing Face of America in the 21st Century, Sam Roberts

Who We Are Now: The Changing Face of America in the 21st Century

Sam Roberts

A revealing view of America and its citizens at the dawn of a new century, by the author of the New York Times Notable Book Who We Are

For more than two centuries, America has taken stock every decade, producing a statistical self-portrait of our population. In Who We Are Now, Sam Roberts identifies and illuminates the trends and social shifts changing the face of America today.

America is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. The nation's complexion changed significantly over the twentieth century, creating more varied and intermingled identities, and with the baby boomers nearing retirement and their children entering college, the graying of America has been balanced, precariously, by the youth culture. And in the wake of welfare reform in the 1990s, the fate of the working poor has become all the more tenuous. Roberts masterfully weaves stories of individuals from all corners of the country alongside the data from the latest U.S. census, creating a compelling guided tour of the places, personalities, and politics that will shape America as the new century stretches before us.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Times Books
  • Publish Date: Oct 1st, 2004
  • Pages: 304
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.64in - 0.81in - 0.76lb
  • EAN: 9780805070804
  • Categories: United States - 21st CenturyModern - 21st CenturySociology - General

About the Author

Roberts, Sam: - Sam Roberts, a 50-year veteran of New York journalism, is an obituaries reporter and formerly the Urban Affairs correspondent at the New York Times. He hosts the New York Times "Close Up," which he inaugurated in 1992, and the podcasts "Only in New York," anthologized in a book of the same name, and "The Caucus." He is the author of A History of New York in 27 Buildings, A History of New York in 101 Objects, and Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America, among others. He has written for the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, New York, Vanity Fair, and Foreign Affairs. A history adviser to Federal Hall, he lives in New York with his wife and two sons.

Praise for this book

"A thorough, lively analysis. With wit--and a wary eye for the manipulative uses to which statistics are put in politics and the marketplace--[Roberts] illuminates the forces driving the nation's social-policy debates." --The New York Times