On America's Front Lines

On the Run is an engrossing book that should also become an ethnographic classic. It describes the world of young jobless black men who have seldom finished high school. Like most such men, Goffman’s friends had almost all served time in prison; before she left the neighborhood, she visited many of them in prison. This is a world with which few readers of this journal are likely to have had much contact. Goffman hadn’t either, until she moved to Aisha’s neighborhood.