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Sociologist Stephen Klineberg presents "a trailblazing study" ( Kirkus Reviews ) that shows how the city of Houston has emerged as a microcosm for America's future--based on a meticulously researched, thirty-eight-year study of its changing economic, demographic, and cultural landscapes. Houston, Texas, long thought of as a traditionally blue-collar black/white Southern city, has transformed into one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse metro areas in the nation, surpassing even New York by some measures. With a diversifying economy and large numbers of both highly skilled technical jobs in engineering and medicine and low-skilled minimum-wage jobs in construction, restaurant work, and personal services, Houston has become a magnet for the new divergent streams of immigration that are transforming America in the 21st century. And thanks to an annual systematic survey conducted over the past thirty-eight years, the ongoing changes in attitudes, beliefs, and life experiences have been measured and studied, creating a compelling data-driven map of the challenges and opportunities that are facing Houston and the rest of the country. In Prophetic City , we'll meet some of the new Americans, including a family who moved to Houston from Mexico in the early 1980s and is still trying to find work that pays more than poverty wages. There's a young man born to highly educated Indian parents in an affluent Houston suburb who grows up to become a doctor in the world's largest med