Talley's Corner - Softcover

Elliot Liebow (1925-1994) served as chief of the Center for the Study of Work and Mental Health of the National Institute of Mental Health. Liebow wrote Tally's Corner as his Ph.D. dissertation at the Catholic University of America. He also published Tell Them Who I Am, a study of homeless women in America, in 1993.

Tally's Corner is an important book for anyone seeking to understand America. (Herbert Gans, author of Democracy and the News)

Whenever and wherever people come out of the dark to face the shadow of America's befuddled relation to the Black man of the city, Tally's Corner is somewhere on the penumbra of consciousness, serving as a lifeline against the currents of ill-informed racist blather about urban poverty. . . . The story of the Black man of the city is ultimately the story of the modern city itself, and in turn of the postmodern global economy. It is a story that is nowhere near its final chapter. (Charles Lemert, Andrus Professor of Sociology, Wesleyan University)

From Reviews of the First Edition: Elliot Liebow is an honest and talented anthropologist who can see clearly, feel unashamedly, and write a straight lively sentence. His book, Tally's Corner . . . emerges as a valuable and even surprising triumph. ―Sunday New York Times This is a sharp, hard-hitting observation of a segment of life and society in action. ―Washington Star Nothing short of brilliant―a work of importance ―Daniel Patrick Moynihannnn

The true mark of a classic book is whether it can withstand the test of time. [Liebow's] arguments concerning the work experience and family life of black street-corner men in a Washington, D.C. ghetto still ring true today. . . . In the last three decades, low-skilled African-American males have encountered greater difficulty gaining access to jobs, even menial jobs. (William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University)

From Reviews of the First Edition:Elliot Liebow is an honest and talented anthropologist who can see clearly, feel unashamedly, and write a straight lively sentence. His book, Tally's Corner . . . emerges as a valuable and even surprising triumph.―Sunday New York TimesThis is a sharp, hard-hitting observation of a segment of life and society in action.―Washington StarNothing short of brilliant―a work of importance―Daniel Patrick Moynihan

It's a remarkable book, an academic work - it grew out of Liebow's doctoral thesis - that isn't dry or boring. It's an in-depth look at a group of men who routinely hung out on a Washington street corner in the early 1960s. These are poor men, flawed men, unemployed and underemployed men. But they are treated with respect. And although Liebow used pseudonyms, giving the men such names as Tally, Sea Cat, Richard and Leroy, they come across as flesh-and-blood individuals. When Tally's Corner was published in 1967, the New York Times called it "a valuable and even surprising triumph." The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) called it "nothing short of brilliant." (The Washington Post)

The first edition of Tally's Corner, a sociological classic, was the first compelling response to the culture of poverty thesis_hat the poor are different and, according to conservatives, morally inferior—and alternative explanations that many African Americans are caught in a tangle of pathology owing to the absence of black men in families. William Julius Wilson's new introduction to this long-awaited revised edition bring the book up to date.