Eleven years ago Claude Brown published an autobiographical masterpiece, Manchild in the Promised Land. It poignantly told white America what it meant to grow up in the slums of Harlem. [The Children of Ham] is Brown's second book, and it should also have a startling impact.

It is the true story of a group of young, abandoned black Americans ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-two who live in the shell of a condemned and deserted city apartment building in upper Harlem. The whole area resembles a bombed-out city and is ghostly in its abandonment…. This is part of urban America through which millions of white Americans commute. The book also concerns "the stuff that history won't even wanna talk about."

In this building and in this urban jungle live the children of Ham. Claude Brown unforgettably sketches chapters on each young person. He clearly records the personalities...