Once I was getting on the case of one of my students, who is in foster care, for doing poorly in my class. He just keep saying, "You don't understand, Mr.____. You can't understand." Thanks to Ms. Toth I think I now understand or at least have a better understanding as to why he was doing poorly in my class. Ms. Toth did an excellent job of revealing the horrors that accompany the foster care system and how that system effects the children it supports. I do have a couple criticisms of this book. I can't help thinking that a few of the children chosen for this book are extreme examples (after all one does end up on Jerry Springer). And I think Ms. Toth unfairly demonizes public foster care. Though I am sure public foster care is far from ideal, I suspect that most people who work in that sytem do the best that they can with the limited resources they have available. Those criticisms aside, this book definitely is an eye opener which takes you into a world that few of us know or can even imagine. This is a world that many of our children have to face--alone.

"Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children in Foster Care" describes five young people who were raised in the foster care system. These are stories of abuse, of abandonment, of poverty, and of frustration with an underfunded and understaffed social services system. "Orphans ..." documents these five young peoples' histories, and discusses their struggles against an often inflexible and cumbersome social services bureaucracy. Some of these struggles span generations, with young people who were raised in the foster care system becoming adults with infants who in turn are raised by the foster care system -- a cycle of failure. "Orphans ..." also documents the frustration of dedicated and overworked social services staff accepting compromises to make a cumbersome foster care system function.

Jennifer Toth is an excellent investigative journalist who becomes involved personally during an investigation. Ms. Toth learns her subjects' histories, and becomes friendly with her subjects in their urban and rural locales, often attempting to help her subjects work through bureaucratic snafus. She writes clearly and well, conveying the social and legal environment surrounding her subjects.

"Orphans ..." is less sensational than Ms. Toth's previous book "The Mole People: Life In The Tunnels Beneath New York City" because the foster care system *appears* more normal than subterranean tunnels. But "Orphans ..." describes a foster care system that affects a *significantly* greater number of people. The foster care system's flaws are more significant because they cause hardship while breeding anti-social attitudes. Like subterranean tunnels, the foster care system has few quick exits.

I recommend Ms. Toth's book. In "Orphans ..." Ms. Toth has cataloged the foster care system's flaws in a concise, readable and human manner.

Unfortunately today, society is no longer surprised by the thought of child neglect or abuse. Such stories are found in the local and national news daily. However, Jennifer 's Orphans of the Living, demands that the issues of child neglect and foster care must not be merely labeled as 3old news.2 The author immerses the reader into the minds of four young people who have grown up within the realm of foster care. Their graphic and heart-piecing anecdotes, clearly relay Toth1s belief that substitute child care does not usually lead the child to happiness or normalcy. Through the stories of these kids, she instead depicts how the foster care system often concentrates more on reputation and politics than the well-being of the children.

Toth provides not a more lucid image of the orphans' psychology, but also on juvenile criminality and violence. Her studies support that abused kids are reduced to thinking that violence will award them with the love and attention of their parents. This book will definitely cause you to view juvenile criminal offenders with new eyes.

Orphan1s of the Living will indeed devour you with its gross and often unbearable rawness. However, as Troth has dutifully acknowledged, we owe it to these kids to hear their stories.

This book gives a look at the hidden world beneath New York City. Most of the people on the surface have no idea that such a place even exists. In this documentary Jennifer Toth visits this "Underworld" and speaks with and interacts with its citizens. There are touching stories of communities trying to raise children, and chilling accounts of thugs that kill for money, a cigarette, or even just because someone stepped in their way. I have seen poverty in my surroundings, as I walk down the city street, but I never dreamed that there could be people who have to live beneath the streets. At school I am working in a unit on poverty, and this book was recommended. I read it, interested to know of the hidden world, and I was informed, interested, and intrigued by it. You meet many of the underground dwellers, or Mole People, and learn about their communities and the roles they play in them. Many of them are much like above-ground villages. You also glimpse the large shadow death has over the tunnel, and the fear many of the Mole People dwell in. I highly recommend this book to any interested in the underground life.

I lived the first 20 years of my life in New York City, often taking subways. In the course of everyday life, I encountered many "street people," but I never knew that there was a virtual underground city underneath the subway system where many people make their homes. In Mole People, Jennifer Toth gets a firsthand look at this world and its residents. Research for this book was quite dangerous, as some of the people living underground are drug addicts and/or mentally unstable. Toth thoroughly explores this strange part of the city, and through interviews humanizes people who have become so alienated from mainstream society that they literally went underground. For many homeless people, living in these tunnels is preferable to the overcrowded and dangerous homeless shelters above ground. Also, there's a kind of homesteading feeling to it, similar to those who squat in abandoned buildings. The downside, of course, is that the tunnels are dangerous (in addition to violence, there is always the threat of electrocution from live subway rails) and some develop an aversion to going above ground at all. Toth doesn't present this as an abstract sociological study. In writing the book, she developed a good rapport with many of the surprisingly diverse people who live down there. It's fascinating how they've created subterranean homes, complete with furniture, electricity and sometimes even pets. On the other hand, it's sad that most of these underground dwellers are there because they can't, or believe they can't, live a normal life (astronomical New York City rents don't help this situation). All in all, a fascinating, insightful look at a rarely studied subculture.

As a New York bureau intern for "The Los Angeles Times", Jennifer Toth wrote an article describing homeless life in the tunnels beneath New York City. While researching the article she met "mole people" (homeless tunnel dwellers) and also met advocates for the homeless. After her article appeared on the newspaper's front page Ms. Toth spent a year researching inside the tunnels and interviewing tunnel dwellers. Her book is an excellent example of investigative journalism.

Ms. Toth initially met tunnel dwellers on the Columbia University campus, through the NYC Metropolitan Transit Police, and through soup kitchens. As her contact network grew she met tunnel dwellers willing to be interviewed and to guide her through the tunnels. Examples include Bernard, self-proclaimed "Lord of the Tunnels"; Frederick, a fourteen-year-old runaway turned prostitute who only relates to the homeless ("People who got homes, I don't know what they want."); J.C., a member of a 200-person tunnel community where the children are held in common (initially he refuses to guide Ms. Toth unless she will "promise to remain underground for a week and to wear my hair in braids." -- she refuses); Sam, an ex-social worker who leads another 200-person tunnel community (no one can leave without his permission); and Blade, a tunnel dweller who first befriends and guides Ms. Toth but ultimately attempts to dominate and control her life.

Ms. Toth's recollections and interviews are very objective (occasionally over-objective), and they illustrate the realities of homelessness: chemical dependency, danger, disease, and poverty. Her recollections and interviews also illustrate the homeless's greatest weapons: discomfort and fear. (E.g., panic because the hypodermic needles homeless young girls use to attack pedestrians might be AIDS-contaminated.) Ms. Toth observed these realities during her investigations. Her book is an excellent description of NYC tunnel life, the suffering of the homeless, and the societal challenge that the homeless represent.

I found this book to be quite one sided. Way to much pity was given to little Johnny. We all have to get along in the world. Sometimes it is not easy but it has to be done. Johnny comes across to me as a spoiled brat who wants his way. In other words, his way or no way.Everyone has tragedies in their lives, we learn from these experiences he was so poor me. He should get the same treatment his foster mother did. BOO to the author on this one. Maybe she should take the BRAT in. Not worth your money

Toth first explored in MOLE PEOPLE the veiled human nature, resilience and compassion that no one pays an attention to in deep hidden place. On her next ORPHAN OF THE LIVING she goes writes about cases of foster children -- other layers of human soul. Toth is consistently taking the path involving the subject and person in depth where the world elides.

On WHAT HAPPENED TO JOHNNIE JORDAN? she advances taking a focus on single person yet as much as goes inside of him that entangles the constellation of people and social system he passed through. It's remarkable to me the publisher gave a go-ahead on this seemingly no winning subject.

I recommend to read first the Methodology And Acknowledgment at the end of book:
"...this book faced a great deal of opposition. Child privacy laws posed the greatest legal roadblock to telling this story.
"But more often than not, these secrecy laws are used to protect criminal abuses and failings within child welfare and juvenile justice systems."

After reading chapters I recommend to read the Methodology... again. This book is made from the people who came forward despite the risk of legal repercussion. There are people who still haven't benumbed their hearts.

This is a really, really good book. Society is so quick to lock up kids who commit awful, heinous crimes, but nobody it seems wants to look inside their heads to find out what makes them tick. Toth tells a terrific, sobering and engrossing story about Johnnie Jordan, who brutally murdered the only person who was ever nice to him -- without explanation. Amazingly, no one in Toledo, Ohio -- not the police, not the judges, not the social workers -- wanted to find out why. Toth did her own investigation and came up with some startling answers.