Who Killed Civil Society?: The Rise of Big Government and the Decline of Bourgeois Norms argues that “formative” efforts by private organizations to prevent social problems from appearing in the first place have been supplanted by the “reformative” efforts of government programs to remedy problems once they appear. This has only made the problems worse, says author Howard Husock.
It is a point that, in various forms, has been made before—and Husock, formerly director of case studies in public policy and management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and now vice president of the Manhattan Institute and a contributor to City Journal, acknowledges and cites those who've made it. His short book makes it somewhat differently, however. It is a collection of profiles of six influential figures, five from history and one from the present, who have tried to fight poverty and its many related consequences.
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