Losing Ground

American Social Policy, 1950 - 1980

By: Charles Murray

Narrated by: Robert Morris

Beginning in the 1950s, America entered a period of unprecedented social reform. This remarkable book demonstrates how the social programs of the 1960s and ’70s had the unintended and perverse effect of slowing and even reversing earlier progress in reducing poverty, crime, ignorance, and discrimination. Using widely understood and accepted data, it conclusively demonstrates that the amalgam of reforms from 1965 to 1970 actually made matters worse.

Why? Charles Murray’s tough-minded answers to this question will please neither radical liberals nor radical conservatives. He offers no easy solutions, but by forcing us to face fundamental intellectual and moral problems about whom we want to help and how, Losing Ground marks an important first step in rethinking social policy.

Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He first came to national attention in 1984 with Losing Ground. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives with his wife in Burkittsville, Maryland.

©1984 Charles Murray (P)1989 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Without bile and without rhetoric it lays out a stark truth that must be faced." ( Business Week)

"A great book." ( Wall Street Journal)

“A remarkable book. Future discussions of social policy cannot proceed without taking the arguments and evidence of this book into account.” (James S. Coleman, University of Chicago)

Excellent

This book was excellent. It is worth reading with an open mind. It’s a shame that it is unlikely to get a fair account.

still relevant

although this is a somewhat older examination of the welfare state in the United States, it still offers cutting analysis that is still relevant to this day.

Very informative

Narrator was sometimes hard to follow had to turn up the volume on headphones

Yes

This book is so important. I'm going to be subjective and say it's probably one of the most important that I've finished in my quest for a more complete understanding of why our country is the way it is today in regards to our societal decay amongst minorities. It's all meat, all potatoes. I had no intention whatsoever of learning about who LBJ was, what he was like, or the way he treated people. I honestly don't care. I wanted to know specifically what social policies he championed and their affects. This book delivered.

subpar digitization

Several skips and a few occasion's of lines repeating where they would have switched from one tape to another.

Fantastic book

This is a fantastic book. My only critique is that the audio was somewhat difficult to hear, as the narrator seemed to step away from his microphone periodically when he was recording his narration.

tremendous book!

I personally have a lot of experience (well over 10 years) working closely with welfare recipients. And this book is dead on accurate.

TERRIBLE AUDIO QUALITY!

Where does Losing Ground rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Great book, decent reader, clusterfuck of a recording.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Losing Ground?

Trying to be a human compressor in order to interpret the spoken word.

Would you be willing to try another one of Robert Morris’s performances?

yes, so long as he used a different recording engineer and/or studio

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Enlightening book.

Simply Modify Statist Education

I have read that there are "moderate" libertarians, and Mr. Murray seems to be just such a one. His statistical analysis of the poor black population, in the time period involving the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s is thorough. Unfortunately, he returned numerous times to the milieu of the U.S. educational system; this he did without once decrying its "compulsory" nature.

Overall this is an excellent audiobook, and Robert Morris did a great job reading the text.

hate facts

this book is so full of hate-facts, gavin mcinnis probably sleeps with a copy under his pillow.