Living Hungry in America

Brown, a teacher at the Harvard School of Public Health, became head of a task force on hunger in 1982. He and his colleagues conducted a three-year inquiry into the existence of malnutrition in our affluent society. The result of their work is this first-person account by Brown, with additions by medical writer Pizer from other doctors' field notes. In the tradition of such landmark sociological tracts as those by Moynihan and Harrington, this report unearths disturbing facts and statistics, calling for nonpartisan action to lessen the gap between rich and poor, which is greater in the United States than in any other industrial country. Anecdotes abound of starving people's exposure to brutal treatment, the irony of going hungry amidst plenty, the undernutrition of the elderly, bureaucratic impediments to relief and the callousness of leaders (who have made such comments as, ""People are in soup lines because the food is free''). This devastating material is a powerful plea for the eradication of the man-made disease of national hunger. (July 29)