Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's
Quest to Change Harlem and America
310 pages Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint
edition (September 10, 2009) $14.95
What would it take to change the lives of
poor children—not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional
miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide?
The question led him to create the Harlem Children’s Zone, a ninety-seven-block
laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes
controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor
kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change
everything in their lives—their schools, their neighborhoods, even the
child-rearing practices of their parents.
Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait
not only of Geoffrey Canada but of the parents and children in Harlem who are
struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully
researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring
and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.
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