A “stunningly detailed and timely” account of the idea of the ghetto from its origins in sixteenth century Venice and its revival by the Nazis to the present (Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The New York Times Book Review).

In Ghetto, Mitchell Duneier shows how the entanglements of race, poverty, and place in America are connected to the ghettos of Europe. He traces the evolution of the ghetto—as both concept and reality—through the stories of scholars and activists who attempted to understand the problems of American cities.

Using new and forgotten sources, Duneier introduces Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake, graduate students whose conception of the South Side of Chicago established a new paradigm for thinking about Northern racism and poverty in the 1940s. He also discusses the psychological links between slum conditions and black powerlessness, the controversy over Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on the black family, and how the debate about urban America changed as middle-class African Americans started escaping the ghettos.

In this sweeping and incisive study, Duneier offers a clear-eyed assessment of the thinkers and doers who have shaped American ideas about urban poverty—and the ghetto. The result is a valuable new estimation of an age-old concept.

A New York Times Notable Book

Winner of the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize