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In her look at how America's social policy has been hijacked by a rhetoric of extremes, Theda Skocpol examines a problem also pertinent to European government. Politicians and advocates argue over programmes for the very poor or tax cuts for the very rich, worrying over the costs of providing for the elderly and pushing programmes that help children without helping their parents. With the spolight on the youngest, the oldest, the richest and the poorest, rarely do we find policies concerned with the people in what Skocpol calls the "missing middle" - the average working parents of modest means on whom society depends. Skocpol draws us into the history of the startling trend and reveals the polarised and fragmented debates that dominate public life today. Taking lessons from the most successful social efforts in the past, she identifies ways the missing middle can reclaim social policy and offers new goals for democracy in the 21st century.