Mr. Lemann's controversial book looks at the subject of black poverty from an arresting angle: by considering the movement of blacks from the rural South to the urban North in the mid 20th century to be every bit as much a mass immigration as the 19th-century movement of rural Italians or Irish to those same Northern cities. If we accept his construct, it has major implications for where poor blacks might be on the assimilation curve. NL: "There's a whole theory that I just disagree with, which is: the key to individual economic success is empowerment in American society.... I don't accept the paradigm: Grandpa came to Ellis Island and he became empowered as a hod carrier, and then Dad became empowered as an IBM junior executive. It sounds like a wacky concept to me, and the real question is: Do people get the skills they need and the motivation to get a job and join the mainstream of American society?"