“Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s quest to change Harlem and America” is an important book. I think so not because his favorable portrait of the Harlem’s Children Zone provides the answers, but because it inspires so many questions: about the nature of urban poverty, the capacity and means by which public institutions can break cycles of systemic inequality, and how a community can transform. Tough doesn’t answer all of these questions—and some he leaves uninvestigated, such as the tension between learning and performing well on exams—but his moving account of Geoffrey Canada’s project to
change the lives of the children of Harlem should be read by anyone who wants to think critically about how poverty, culture and education intersect.