In their first and highly praised book, Regulating the Poor, Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, two of America's best-known radical social critics, documented the rise of the welfare crisis in America and put forth their thesis as to its causes, effects, and solutions.  In The Politics of Turmoil, they have gathered their other essays on the urban crisis, analyzing the different aspects of the political upheaval produced in the cities since World War II.

One facet of this upheaval has been the great black migration to the cities and the subsequent rise of insurgency among the black poor themselves, taking the form of marches, riots, rent strikes, and welfare protest.  Several essays evaluate these movements, showing that the relatively closed American political system, which often made protest the only option available to the poor, also finally defeated them. 

Migration brought great numbers of blacks into the arena of city politics, generating the hope that they would follow the path presumably taken by other ethnic groups, gaining power and patronage through municipal politics.  Another group of essays examines the basis for the hope in the political structure of contemporary American cities, and concludes that the prospects for the realization of black power are exceedingly dim.

The final essays discuss efforts by American political elites to moderate the disorder welling up in the ghettos, efforts ranging from the establishment of manpower training and mental health programs to the "War on Poverty."  Modest as these programs were, the greater irony is that the black poor did not turn out to be their chief beneficiaries; sectors of the middle class profited more.  Once again, the poor had made the trouble and others made the gains.