“The changes in Port Clinton that have led to growing numbers of kids, of all races and both genders, being denied the promise of the American Dream—changes in economic circumstance, in family structure and parenting, in schools, and in neighborhoods—are surprisingly representative of America writ large.”

The author uses his hometown, Port Clinton, Ohio, as a microcosm of the changes in America and the increasing importance of class from the 1950s to the present. The author contrasts stories of families at various levels of income in his hometown in the 1950s with modern families throughout the book, showing how opportunities for success have changed over time. 

“Over and over again members of the class of 1959 use the same words to describe the material conditions of our youth: ‘We were poor, but we didn’t know it.”

Economic insecurity, family instability, neighborhood distress, and financial and organizational barriers were less important in the 1950s, according to the author, and therefore the poorer kids in his class did not consider themselves poor. Neighborhoods and schools were less segregated by class, and therefore those who were poorer were still exposed to opportunities that are less available today outside of the upper and middle classes.

“Do youth today coming from different social and economic backgrounds in fact have roughly equal life chances, and has that changed in recent decades?”

This is the central question of the book: whether today’s youth have equal opportunity across classes, as they seemed to in the 1950s.