威廉•硃利葉斯•威爾遜（William Julius Wilson），美國著名社會學傢，生於1935年，1966年獲得華盛頓州立大學博士學位，1972年至1996年在芝加哥大學任教，後轉入哈佛大學，於約翰•F•肯尼迪政府學院任教授，主要研究領域為民權、種族、貧睏問題以及社會與城市政策。曾經擔任美國社會學協會主席，獲得過四十多個榮譽學位，包括耶魯大學、普林斯頓大學、哥倫比亞大學等校的榮譽博士學位。他也是美國國傢科學院院士。1996年，他被《時代》雜誌評為美國最有影響力的二十五人之一。1998年獲得瞭美國科學界的最高榮譽“國傢科學勛章”。

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