Wendell Pritchett challenges popular and scholarly images of the modern ghetto by highlighting Brownsville's history as a working-class neighborhood. This area of East Brooklyn underwent significant racial change, beginning the twentieth century as a largely white, Jewish neighborhood. Brownsville's black and Latino populations grew rapidly in the postwar years. Between 1940 and 1970, the population switched from eighty-five percent white to ninety-five percent black and Latino. Throughout these decades, however, this remained a home for New York's changing working classes. Brownsville residents, generally from the lower tiers of the city's working class, shared a history of political and economic marginalization. The neighborhood's later residents faced greater obstacles, as a result of racism, public policy, and economic change. Pritchett's fine study chronicles these changes and continuities and emphasizes white and black residents' unending efforts to secure needed resources and power.