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James Garbarino. San Francisco: JosseyBass, 7995. 216 pp. $25.00.
James Garbarino concludes his book by pondering how the next generation will evaluate our efforts to address the current challenges in the social environment for our children. He states, "There will be a full accounting. They will ask what we did in response to what we knew. What will be our answer?" This book is an attempt to encourage intervention in what Garbarino calls the "socially toxic environment" in which many children live. He describes the book as an effort to provide a picture of childhood in America as it was, is now, and may be in the future, likening it to the spirits from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. "This is only the story of what might be but it will come to pass if we do not act with a passion to make a difference."
Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment is a well written book designed to grab the attention of the middle class. The author uses the erosion of middle-class childhood as a signal that American society in general has become socially toxic...