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"Paul Tough's clear-eyed portrait of Geoffrey Canada offers the most cogent, provocative, and original thinking on urban poverty to come along in many, many years. Whatever It Takes pushed me to question what I thought I knew. Powerful and hopeful, disturbing and daring, it's one important book. Essential, even." — Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here.


"[Whatever It Takes is] one of the best books ever written about how poverty influences learning, and vice versa." — Jay Mathews, Washington Post


"Paul Tough, a New York Times Magazine editor, spent five years reporting on the nonprofit community-based organization, following Geoffrey Canada and many families through the first several years of the school. Whatever It Takes reveals Canada's relentless drive to see his students succeed. This unflinching book will motivate us all to take action and make our schools places of possibility and hope." — Essence, September 2008

Paul Tough is the author of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America. His new book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, will be published in September 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He has written extensively about education, child development, poverty, and politics, including cover stories in the New York Times Magazine on character education, the achievement gap, and the Harlem Children’s Zone. He has worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Magazine and as a reporter and producer for the public-radio program “This American Life." He was the founding editor of Open Letters, an online magazine. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, GQ, Esquire, and Geist, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times. He lives with his wife and son in New York.

author photo

Paul Tough

Author photo by Mary McIlvaine