So much energy has been expended discussing and debating the plight of the inner-city poor that the lives of the poor themselves sometimes seem to fall by the wayside. After all, talking about a group of people is different from talking with a group of people, and statistics can only illustrate so much. Jonathan Kozol first sounded the wake-up call about the state of the American poor with his book Death At An Early Age, and 30 years later his quest to illuminate the plight of the disadvantaged hasn't reached its conclusion; if anything, it's intensified. In the early '90s, Kozol—a white Harvard grad and '60s activist—spent time in some of the poorest neighborhoods of the South Bronx. His experiences were detailed in Amazing Grace, but the people he encountered, specifically the children, called for a second book. Ordinary Resurrections returns Kozol to New York's forgotten underclass, but his creeping old age and the illness of his parents makes this voyage more personal. As is his habit, he lets the children he meets speak freely in their own words, listening rather than lecturing and relating what he finds to the reader. Though Kozol does have a streak of hectoring in him, for the most part his subjects—here primarily a trio of precocious first-graders named Elio, Pineapple, and Ariel—speak for him, providing an illuminating view of how these children see a world where fathers reside "upstate," shootings are commonplace, and schools struggle to stay afloat without funding. As usual for Kozol, the details he illustrates can be sad, funny, and moving, but by focusing on children, he offers a faint glimmer of hope that the next generation might right the wrongs perpetuated before them.