The Fourth World: The Imprisoned, the Poor, the Sick, the Elderly and Underaged in America

Edited By Leo Hamalian and Frederick R. Karl

From the back cover: “For such people, America is not a civilization, but a jungle!’ The selections in this extraordinary anthology really speak for themselves. They show the Fourth * World from within and without. Those within are the imprisoned, the elderly, the sick, and the oppressed. Those outside the Fourth World are fortunate enough to have escaped from it, or were sufficiently lucky not to have been born into it.

As the reader shall see, the Fourth World exists outside national politics, outside the economic state of the nation, beyond war and peace, even beyond historical eras. When we speak of the Fourth World, then, we speak of a sub-nation within a larger nation, of an invisible people (because we choose not to see them) amounting to more than one-quarter of our population; but one, nevertheless, with no distinct laws, boundaries, or culture of its own, except the rules of survival. For such people, America is not a civilization, but a jungle.”

New York. Del Publishing. 1976. 436p.