Is there an urban underclass that is becoming increasingly isolated from mainstream social and economic life? If so, how does it perpetuate itself and how does it limit the opportunities of those raised in poverty neighbourhoods? This volume looks at the hypothesis of inner-city isolation from different perspectives. Historian Roger Lane contrasts the life of poor African-Americans in 19th-century Philadelphia with the underclass of today and finds the origins of many current predicaments in the post-Civil War period when black population, despite strong aspirations for upward mobility, were denied entry into the Industrial Age. Sociologist John Kasarda examines recent trends in the physical and economic isolation of the big-city poor. Ethnographers Elijah Anderson and Eloise Dunlap chronicle the ties that prevent individual households from escaping this environment. Jeffrey Fagan analyzes the alternative culture of inner-city crime; Ansley Hamid, the alternative culture of drugs. Roberto Fernandez considers the friendship and institutional networks of the inner-city poor in Chicago.