As a former AFDC recipient, these essays reminded me of devastingly traumatic decisions that I had experienced while receiving aid and of the choices that were made. They are dramatically realistic everyday experiences that many low-income women, single parents, and working poor women should not be forced into making. Getting out of poverty is an lifetime battle that is a continuous struggle. Some survive, some never make it. I highly recommend reading "For crying out loud".

This is an excellent book as it relates to me. A divorced women in her late 40's, not on a middle management salary level nor an executive level but on a secy salary. As I said in the past it is "reverse racism". It is a term which falls under "most single women" in the United States. Being on a secretary salary but paying for the necessities of life such as clothing, stockings, rent, transportation, food, cleaning, IRS taxes, etc. seems to me that the government believes that we are really married! As a single women I pay for 2. I agree with the authors that by addressing the crucial issues here and actually state the facts that maybe someone will understand exactly what the government does to dehumanize women who actually are in a poverty situation. I read in the newsletter of Network for Women Services, that the U.S. Census stated that "in 2 of the seven zip codes in the South Bronx, in New York City alone, over 27,000 women were living below the poverty level". This is very difficult at times and many times out of lonliness, lack of funds, no companion, isolation, and predisposed thoughts of most people about us, I feel like giving up! It is very hard for me and at times I just come home and burst into tears because I cannot do what other single women who are not on the poverty level do and I envy them. Innuendos, cliche's and cultural conditions only add to the barrage of statistics and myths of being a poverty women. Now that we are moving rather quickly into the 21st century will any of these problems going to be addressed?

Collaboratively compiled and edited by Randy Albelda (Economics, University of Massachusetts) and Ann Withorn (Social Policy, University of Massachusetts), Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty, And Beyond is a scholarly selection of impressive essays by a variety of learned authors on topics relating to American welfare policy. From the effects of globalization on the current system, to fallacies of welfare-to-work policies, to issues of the rights of women and people of color, Lost Ground covers a very wide area of controversial issues often conveniently ignored by today's too-eager politics. Lost Ground is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to academic reference collections and reading lists in the area of American social policy in general, and welfare reform in particular.

The downside of welfare reforn is well documented in this new anthology. Moreover, welfare issues are analyzed in the context of broad political shifts, including globalization, the end of the family wage, the sexual revolution, and rise of black liberation, feminism, and multiculturalism.