Based on interviews with over three hundred mentors, youths, foundation officials, scholars, and youth workers, The Kindness of Strangers takes a hard look at mentoring: How much can really be accomplished? What makes the difference between a successful program and a program fraught with difficulties? What kinds of people make the most effective mentors? Is mentoring really the best way to reach kids with tough lives? Marc Freedman brings experience, research, and realism to these questions in an effort to reach the truth about today's mentoring movement.