The Tragedy of American Compassion, Our modern welfare system has failed. It's time we learned from the warm hearts and hard heads of those who helped the poor before government grabbed the spotlight. In this classic work, Marvin Olasky traces the decline of welfare policy in America from the nineteenth century to the Great Society of the 1960s and beyond. Emphasizing a holistic, human-centered approach to charity and welfare, he urges conservatives and liberals to resist failed policies that ultimately harm the most vulnerable in society. Olasky tells of compassionate women and men who faced problems like our contemporary ones-fatherlessness, homelessness, alcoholism, and drug abuse-but opened their hearts and homes, not just their wallets. They attacked causes of poverty and did not simply apply bandages. They understood that true compassion is challenging, personal, and spiritual, and realized we need more than bread and circuses to battle a poverty of the soul.