威廉•朱利叶斯•威尔逊（William Julius Wilson），美国著名社会学家，生于1935年，1966年获得华盛顿州立大学博士学位，1972年至1996年在芝加哥大学任教，后转入哈佛大学，于约翰•F•肯尼迪政府学院任教授，主要研究领域为民权、种族、贫困问题以及社会与城市政策。曾经担任美国社会学协会主席，获得过四十多个荣誉学位，包括耶鲁大学、普林斯顿大学、哥伦比亚大学等校的荣誉博士学位。他也是美国国家科学院院士。1996年，他被《时代》杂志评为美国最有影响力的二十五人之一。1998年获得了美国科学界的最高荣誉“国家科学勋章”。

Wilson, one of our foremost authorities on race and poverty, challenges decades of liberal and conservative pieties to look squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on our urban ghettos. Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, Wilson persuasively argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities--from fatherless households to drugs and violent crime--stem directly from the disappearance of blue-collar jobs in the wake of a globalized economy. Wilson's achievement is to portray this crisis as one that affects all Americans, and to propose solutions whose benefits would be felt across our society. At a time when welfare is ending and our country's racial dialectic is more strained than ever, When Work Disappears is a sane, courageous, and desperately important work.

"Wilson is the keenest liberal analyst of the most perplexing of all American problems...[This book is] more ambitious and more accessible than anything he has done before."--The New Yorker