pt. I. Dimensions of social stratification. Shadowy lines that still divide / Janny Scott and David Leonhardt ; A statistical portrait of the U.S. working class / Michael D. Yates ; The other America: an enduring shame / Jonathan Alter ; Tilting the tax system in favor of the rich / The New York Times ; Income and inequality: millions left behind / Woodrow Ginsberg ; The perks of privilege / Clara Jeffrey ; Our society's middle is shrinking from view / Louise Auerhahn ; The vanishing middle class job: as income gap widens, uncertainty spreads / Griff Witte ; The death of Horatio Alger: our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality / Paul Krugman ; Rags to riches?: the American dream is less common in the United States than elsewhere / Bernard Wasow

pt. II. The consequences of class. Still not getting by in Bush's America / Joel Wendland ; America's low-wage workers: the demography of a caste / Beth Shulman ; As the rich get richer, do people get sicker?: researchers debate whether income inequality impairs public health / Lila Gutterman ; Sick of poverty / Robert Sapolsky ; A wider lens on the black-white achievement gap / Richard Rothstein ; Does meritocracy work? / Ross Douthat ; The rich get richer and the poor get prison / Jeffrey Reiman ; Poverty and violent crime / Elliott Currie ; The Civil Rights Act of 1964: the social class exclusion / Janis Johnston ; Dying alone: an interview with Eric Klinenberg / University of Chicago Press ; Cast away: broken levees, unbroken barriers / Jason DeParle ; New Orleans by the numbers / Peter Wagner and Susan Edwards ; Sacrifices of war remain unshared / Chuck Raasch ; Their last resort / Ann Scott Tyson ; Bioethics, social class, and the sociological imagination / Leigh Turner ; Poverty and pollution in the United States / Robert D. Bullard

pt. III. Reducing inequality. Narrowing the income gap between rich and poor / Michael Hout and Samuel R. Lucas ; Millennium development goals for children in the United States to be achieved by 2015 / Children's Defense Fund ; Taxing concentrated wealth to broaden the American dream: good policy, good politics, good for America / Dedrick Muhammad and Chuck Collins.