Children of Crisis

In the 1950s Robert Coles began studying, living among, and, above all, listening to American children. The results of his efforts -- revealed in five volumes published between 1967 and 1977 -- constitute one of the most searching and vigorous social studies ever undertaken by one person in the United States.

Here, heard often in their own voices, are America's "children of crisis": African American children caught in the throes of the South's racial integration; The children of impoverish...