书名：Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis我们的孩子
作者：Robert D. Putnam
出版社名称：Simon & Schuster
出版时间：2016
语种：英文
ISBN：9781476769905
商品尺寸：14 x 2.8 x 21.3 cm
包装：平装
页数：400（以实物为准）
★社会分层、阶级固化、寒门再难出贵子
★一部关于机会不平等与孩子未来的生命纪实
★克林顿、布什、奥巴马等政府首脑资深顾问、哈佛大学资深教授帕特南力作
★每一位父母、每一位关心下一代成长的有识之士不得不读的作品

罗伯特·帕特南一向以其深厚的学养和敏锐的社会洞察力闻名。Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis《我们的孩子》是帕特南新出版的又一部力作。在这本新作里，帕特南将视角从社会资本转向社会不平等问题，以对比的形式呈现两代普通美国人的人生故事，力图展示阶级和阶层不平等问题已在21世纪的美国社会达到触目惊心的程度，理应获得任何对社会抱有理想与关怀的读者的高度关注。

媒体评论：
“亲切的笔调，精确的研究，以小见大，从一个个市镇的命运，透视半个世纪来美国梦的危机。这是一个关于不平等和阶级隔离的美国故事，发人深省。”——汪晖，清华大学人文学院教授

A New York Times bestseller and “a passionate, urgent” (The New Yorker) examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility.

Central to the very idea of America is the principle that we are a nation of opportunity. But over the last quarter century we have seen a disturbing “opportunity gap” emerge. We Americans have always believed that those who have talent and try hard will succeed, but this central tenet of the American Dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was.
In Our Kids, Robert Putnam offers a personal and authoritative look at this new American crisis, beginning with the example of his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. The vast majority of those students went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have faced diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich, middle class, and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, brilliantly blended with the latest social-science research.

Review
“There are just a few essential reads if you want to understand the American social and political landscape today. Robert Putnam’s Our Kids… deserve[s] to be on that list.”(David Brooks The New York Times)

“Putman’s new book is an eye-opener. When serious political candidates maintain that there are no classes in America, Putnam shows us the reality — and it is anything but reassuring.”(Alan Wolfe Washington Post Book World)

“A thoughtful and persuasive book.” (The Economist)
在一个阶级固化的社会里，寒门为什么再难出贵子？为了回答这一问题，理解美国社会的贫富两极分化是如何影响下一代人的生活机遇的，哈佛大学帕特南教授组织研究团队，以数年之功，追踪访问了生活在美国各地的107位年轻人，呈现出美国社会在过去大半个世纪以来的变迁图景，书写了一则关于“美国梦之衰落”的警世恒言。

正如《纽约时报书评》所言，“读罢此书，没人还能相信美国还有机会平等这回事。”帕特南用“以点带面”的叙述方式，生动地展示了美国社会在过去半世纪以来日渐扩大的“阶级鸿沟”。在Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis《我们的孩子》一书中，帕特南依次讨论了穷孩子和富家子在成长过程中所经历的全方位差距。中上阶级的父母有更多时间陪伴孩子、给予引导、提供资源，而寒门子弟，不仅是经济上“穷”，还更有可能生活在残缺不全的破碎家庭，成长过程中无法得到父母双全的关爱或在隔代教养的环境中长大。全书反复出现的一个意象——贫富阶级之间的“剪刀差”——在家庭结构、父母教育方式、学校教育、邻里社区内都有鲜明的反映。在这个生而不平等的时代，仅仅谈机会均等都是不公正的！

2013年，帕特南曾因“深化了我们对美国社区的理解”而得到总统颁布的国家人文勋章。本书在此意义上又是一次学术的跃进，它更生动地展示出美国社会的全幅图景：当寒门子弟发现自己再努力也是徒劳时，美国梦已碎。对于当下的中国人而言，这本书以手术刀般的锐利所进行的批判，是我们千金难买的经验和教训。
罗伯特·帕特南，美国当代杰出的政治学家，曾担任美国政治学协会主席。哈佛大学马尔金公共政策讲席教授，美国国家科学院院士，2006年荣获政治学界约翰·斯凯特奖，且为2013年总统颁布的国家人文勋章得主。曾出任肯尼迪政府管理学院院长。目前著书14部，被译为20多种语言。多年来，他担任过多届美国总统、英国首相、法国总统以及多个国家政府首脑的资深顾问，其学术思想也激发了全球范围内草根社会运动的兴起。

Robert D. Putnam is the Professor of International Peace at Harvard University. He is the authour of six previous books, and his articles have appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT as well as many other publications.
MY HOMETOWN WAS, IN THE 1950S,A PASSABLE EMBODIMENT OF the American Dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for all the kids in town, whatever their background. A half century later, however, life in Port Clinton, Ohio, is a split-screen American nightmare, a community in which kids from the wrong side of the tracks that bisect the town can barely imagine the future that awaits the kids from the right side of the tracks. And the story of Port Clinton turns out to be sadly typical of America. How this transformation happened, why it matters, and how we might begin to alter the cursed course of our society is the subject of this book.

The most rigorous economic and social history now available suggests that socioeconomic barriers in America(and in Port Clinton) in the 1950s were at their lowest ebb in more than a century: economic and educational expansion were high; income equality was relatively high; class segregation in neighborhoods and schools was low; class barriers to intermarriage and social intercourse were low; civic engagement and social solidarity were high; and opportunities for kids born in the lower echelon to scale the socioeconomic ladder were abundant. Though small and not very diverse racially, Port Clinton in the 1950s was in all other respects a remarkably representative microcosm of America, demographically, economically, educationally, socially, and even politically.(Ottawa County, of which Port Clinton is county seat, is the bellwether county in the bellwether state of the United States-that is, the county whose election results have historically been closest to the national outcome.) The life stories of my high school classmates show that the opportunities open to Don and Libby, two poor white kids, and even to Jesse and Cheryl, two poor black kids, to rise on the basis of their own talents and energy were not so different from the opportunities open to Frank, the only real scion of privilege in our class.

No single town or city could possibly represent all of America, and Port Clinton in the 1950s was hardly paradise. As in the rest of America at the time, minorities in Port Clinton suffered serious discrimination and women were frequently marginalized, as we shall explore later in this chapter. Few of us, including me, would want to return there without major reforms. But social class was not a major constraint on opportunity.