A fixture in the community of scholars focusing on issues of poverty, inequality, and social policy for more than 40 years – Robert Plotnick – is retiring this spring from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. Bob has long been a mentor and friend, and his retirement announcement provided me with a nudge and opportunity to read, Progress Against Poverty: A Review of the 1964-1974 Decade, published in 1975 with co-author Felicity Skidmore. Apart from being one of the first scholarly efforts to assess the impact of the War on Poverty, Progress Against Poverty has the distinction of being the first book volume commissioned by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (IRP).