Lillian Rubin's book, Families on the Fault Line, goes directly to the experience of everyday people and shows how the connection between economic decline and racial tension is continuously reinvented in America. She interviewed 162 families in all, mostly white, but including a substantial number of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, many from families she had kept in touch with since first interviewing them for her book Worlds of Pain, written about twenty years before. Rubin's compassion for her subjects' situation is clear, and this, added to her training as a psychotherapist, enables her to gain their confidence and draw out the tru