Introduction: Approaches to social problems -- I. Corporate power : Pinto madness -- The food monsters -- When they closed the factory gates: How big steel scrapped a community -- II. Economic crisis : Left out: The human cost of the collapse of industrial America -- The specter of full employment -- Boomtown and bust-town -- III. Inequality : The fading dream: Economic crisis and the new inequality -- Keeping the poor poor -- High on the hog -- Gimme shelters -- and cut my taxes -- IV. Racism : Growing up black in America -- A piece of the pie -- American immigration policy: How strait the gate? -- V. Sexism : The longest war -- The fight for pay equity -- Women and poverty -- Discrimination and sexual preference -- VI. The family : The transformation of the family -- Worlds of pain -- The marriage license as a hitting license -- VII. The environment : The economic meaning of ecology -- Love canal and the poisoning of America -- American ground transport -- VIII. The workplace : The distribution of work and income -- Brave new workplace -- Life on the global assembly line -- IX. Health and welfare : The mirage of reform -- Breath of death: The asbestos disaster comes home to roost -- The relief of welfare -- X. Crime and justice : Decisions of death -- The American prison: A tinderbox -- The police, the community, and immigration -- How lawless are big companies? -- XI. National security : The search for national security -- The culture of procurement -- Corporate power and military corruption -- Nuclear war and climatic catastrophe: Some policy implications -- XII. Epilogue: Options and strategies : What we can do -- Building a democratic economy -- No room in the lifeboats

1. United States -- Social conditions -- 1980
2. United States -- Social policy -- 1980
3. Social problems