Offers a new perspective on contemporary debates over how we understand and represent our own society and its class divisions

Since the Gilded Age, social scientists, middle-class reformers, and writers have left the comforts of their offices to "pass" as steel workers, coal miners, assembly-line laborers, waitresses, hoboes, and other working and poor people in an attempt to gain a fuller and more authentic understanding of the lives of the working class and the poor. In this first, sweeping study of undercover investigations of work and poverty in America, award-winning historian Mark Pittenger examines how
intellectuals were shaped by their experiences with the poor, and how despite their sympathy toward working-class people, they unintentionally helped to develop the contemporary concept of a degraded and "other" American underclass.
While contributing to our understanding of the history of American social
thought, Class Unknown offers a new perspective on contemporary debates over how we understand
and represent our own society and its class divisions.

"Pittenger provides a memorable meditation on America's ongoing struggle to come to terms with class division." - Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"In charting territories mostly unknown to contemporary scholars in cultural studies and the social sciences and putting the various undercover investigations in their proper social and intellectual contexts, the author has made an invaluable contribution to the historiography of American social thought." - Journal of American Culture

"A highly original and thorough account...Class Unknownmakes a unique and significant contribution to scholarship on poverty and reform in American history." - History: Reviews of New Books

"Mark Pittenger expertly explores this body of work in his engaging new book....Class Unknownmakes important contributions to social science history and cultural studies of labor and should be a staple of upper undergraduate and graduate courses." - American Historical Review

"Mark Pittenger has written a fascinating gem of a book." - Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society

"Pittenger effectively raises the contents, the morals, and the justifications of these down-and-outers....Perhaps the nicest compliment that can be given to Class Unknownis that it inspires me to teach my students how sociologists (and journalists, activists, and novelists) have used undercover strategies to depict the interaction order. We burrow beneath the surface, pretending to be what we are not, but at our best we emerge with sharper eyes and a more compassionate heart." - American Journal of Sociology

"Before anthropologists became 'participant observers' or Norman Mailer discovered the 'new journalism,' generations of socially engaged Americans assumed undercover identities and conducted covert investigations to experience and report upon the reality of life for the nations poor and marginalized. Mark Pittengers original and highly readable book illuminates the motivations and strategies of these reform-minded investigators, and the work they produced. Class Unknown enlarges our understanding of journalism, reform, and the shifting perceptions of social class in America. I enjoyed this book and learned from it." - The Oxford Companion to United States History