Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race: How Keynesians Misguided the War on Poverty. By Judith Russell. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 244p. $62.50 cloth, $24.50 paper.

The question Judith Russell asks in her book is why the War on Poverty did not include an assault on adult unemployment. The Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) of 1964, the centerpiece of the War, chiefly provided service and education programs for children and youth. Russell believes that only “jobs programs” for adults could have cured poverty. With them, the emerging problem of black joblessness might have been forestalled. Without them, she asserts, the War failed, leading to a conservative era where poverty persists.