William Kornblum conducts research on urban, social ecology, and community studies. Among his publications are: At Sea in the City: New York from the Water's Edge; Blue Collar Community, a study of the steel mill neighborhoods of South Chicago; Growing Up Poor and Uptown Kids, written with Terry Williams, and West 42nd Street, the Bright Lights, which during the 1980s became a guide to understanding the street life of lower Times Square. He has served as a social scientist for the U.S. Department of Interior and worked on the development of national parks and environmental reserves in the nation's metropolitan regions. He is also the author of two popular undergraduate textbooks, Social Problems (Pearson) and Sociology in a Changing World (Wadsworth). Kornblum received his PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago (1971) and his undergraduate degree in biology from Cornell (1961) He taught physics and chemistry as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ivory Coast (1962-63) and was on the faculty at the University of Washington before he came to the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1973.