African Americans and Latinos earn lower grades and drop out of college more often than whites or Asians. Yet 30 years after deliberate minority recruitment efforts began, we still don't know why. In "The Shape of the River", William Bowen and Derek Bok documented the benefits of affirmative action for minority students, their communities, and the nation at large. But they also found that too many failed to achieve academic success. In "The Source of the River", Douglas Massey and his colleagues investigate the roots of minority underperformance in selective colleges and universities. They explain how such factors as neighbourhood, family, peer group, and early schooling influence the academic performance of students from differing racial and ethnic origins and differing social classes. Drawing on the "National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen" the authors undertake a comprehensive analysis of the diverse pathways by which whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asians enter American higher education. Theirs is the first study to document the different characteristics that students bring to campus and to trace out the influence of these differences on later academic performance.