The New Deal or Lighting the Way

The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940

Author: Anthony J Badger

This notably successful history is not simply another narrative of the New Deal. The author considers important aspects of New Deal activity and explores the major problems in interpreting the history of each.

Library Journal

An interpretive synthesis of the history of the New Deal. Historical writing about that era has been stalemated since the 1960s, when radical critics challenged the dominant liberal interpretation. Though many aspects of this significant period have since been researched, historians largely have avoided the grand interpretation of the New Deal that used to predominate. The result has been many studies but little coherence. While Badger's work can hardly be called a major synthesis, nor can his conclusions be considered startling, it reveals that some sense can be made out of the massive, fragmented body of historical work. The New Deal was not as revolutionary as some have thought, but neither was it as conservative as others have argued. Its significance came from its success in sustaining American society during a period of great stress. A well-written study.-- Charles K. Piehl, Mankoto State Univ., Minn.

What People Are Saying

James Patterson
Extraordinarily well researched, clearly written, and balanced.

Frank Freidel
An admirable, unique overview and analysis.... .... This is the finest survey [in over] a quarter-century...

Dan T. Carter
A superb one-volume synthesis...never loses sight of the critical elements of change and continuity that marked the decade.

Ellis W. Hawley
Masterfully done...it deserves high marks for its clear and lively prose, sound judgments, and penetrating insights.

Books about: Diners or British Toast Racks for Collectors and the History of Toast

Lighting the Way: Volunteer Child Advocates Speak Out

Author: National Court Appointed Special Advocat

Parents on the run from the law, stepparents who physically or sexually assault their children, teenagers who set fire to themselves and others: such are the tales of the abused and neglected child. Yet the 15 men and women featured in Lighting the Way discover that by speaking on behalf of abused children as court appointed volunteer advocates, they find their own voices as well -- voices that speak for joy amid despair, that offer hope in the face of hopelessness, that resonate with a deep satisfaction of aiding children. Lighting the Way takes readers on a journey of self-discovery and explains how ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things.

Table of Contents:

	Poem by Danielle	v
	Foreword	vii
	Brenda Gowen, Tarpon Springs, Florida	1
	Rick Neyrey, Houston, Texas	9
	Julie Hobson, Granville, Ohio	15
	Achaessa James, Seattle, Washington	23
	Kathleen Simmons, Liberty, Indiana	31
	Sebastian Stubbs, Sr., Macon, Georgia	37
	Susan Forstadt and Stephen Forstadt, Los Angeles, California	43
	Linda Murphy, Houston, Texas	49
	Premelia Lindor, Manchester, New Hampshire	55
	Beverly Tuttle, Porcupine, South Dakota	61
	Mary Kilgour, Gainesville, Florida	65
	Dago Benavidez, Salem, Oregon	71
	Linda Warfield, Phoenix, Arizona	75
	Donna Ratcliffe, Seminole County, Florida	79
	Stephanie O'Shieles, Houston, Texas	85
	Afterword	91
	Poem by Nicole	93
	Acknowledgments	94

The Sagebrush State or Achieving Our Country

The Sagebrush State: Nevada's History, Government, and Politics

Author: Michael W Bowers

Teachers of Nevada history and government at all levels will welcome The Sagebrush State. This clear, authoritative, and readable book offers a balanced, up-to-date view of the state of Nevada. The author has referred to all the appropriate primary and secondary sources in creating this compact volume. He relates the characteristics of Nevada politics and government to the state's historical development and provides an evenhanded look at Nevada's problems as well as its progress. The Sagebrush State is thoroughly documented, providing useful figures and tables, and includes the complete text of the state constitution for quick reference. This volume serves as a text for the Nevada Constitution component required for graduation from all Nevada colleges and universities. It is also an invaluable resource for civics teachers in secondary schools, for members of the media who report on state politics, and for the many newcomers to Nevada who want an accurate description of Nevada's origins and how the state works.

Look this: The 4 Hour Workweek or Before You Do

Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America

Author: Richard Rorty

Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the future? Lately the American Left, withdrawing into the ivied halls of academe to rue the nation's shame, has answered yes in both word and deed. In Achieving Our Country, one of America's foremost philosophers challenges this lost generation of the Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers like Walt Whitman and John Dewey.

How have national pride and American patriotism come to seem an endorsement of atrocities—from slavery to the slaughter of Native Americans, from the rape of ancient forests to the Vietnam War? Achieving Our Country traces the sources of this debilitating mentality of shame in the Left, as well as the harm it does to its proponents and to the country. At the center of this history is the conflict between the Old Left and the New that arose during the Vietnam War era. Richard Rorty describes how the paradoxical victory of the antiwar movement, ushering in the Nixon years, encouraged a disillusioned generation of intellectuals to pursue "High Theory" at the expense of considering the place of ideas in our common life. In this turn to theory, Rorty sees a retreat from the secularism and pragmatism championed by Dewey and Whitman, and he decries the tendency of the heirs of the New Left to theorize about the United States from a distance instead of participating in the civic work of shaping our national future.

In the absence of a vibrant, active Left, the views of intellectuals on the American Right have come to dominate the public sphere. This galvanizing book, adapted from Rorty's MasseyLectures of 1997, takes the first step toward redressing the imbalance in American cultural life by rallying those on the Left to the civic engagement and inspiration needed for "achieving our country."

Library Journal

Rorty contrasts two views of America: those of the Old Left and of the New Left. The Old Left he associates with Walt Whitman's "American Dream" and John Dewey's idea of an ever-evolving secular society of varied, autonomous agents whose evils are remediable because they result from failures of imagination. The New Left he associates with spectators who damn America for such past "atrocities" as slavery, the massacre of Indians, and the Vietnam War. Rorty claims that the Old Left was stubbornly reformist, whereas the New Left collaborates with and thereby empowers the Right by supplanting real politics with cultural issues. He urges the New Left to understand that our national character has not been settled but is still being formed. The book contrasts the two Lefts clearly enough, but the rest of it is rather foggy with occasional flashes of light. For larger academic libraries only.Robert Hoffman, York Coll., CUNY

Alan Ryan

Achieving Our Country is an appeal to American intellectuals to abandon the intransigent cynicism of the academic, cultural left and to return to the political ambitiohns of Emerson, Dewey, Herbert Croly and their allies. What Rorty has written -- as deftly, amusingly and cleverly as he always writes -- is a lay sermon for the untheological...[He argues] that we would do better to try to improve the world than lament its fallen condition. On that he will carry with him a good many readers. -- New York Times Book Review

NY Times Book Review

A witty and distinuished philosopher appeals to American intellectuals to return to the political ideals of Emerson, Dewey and other ancestors.

Tikkun - Michael Berube

[A] blueprint for nothing less than the renewal of the American left, a provocative challenge to left sectarianism of the past and present.

Kirkus Reviews

In this slim volume (from a series of lectures), eminent liberal political theorist Rorty passes judgment on the state of the US left. And he is not amused. Beginning from familiar places for him, John Dewey and Walt Whitman, Rorty (Humanities/Univ. Of Virginia) argues that the faith of these men in what the US might become, their dismissal of all closed systems of thinking, their turn from religious authority to secular joy in the contingent process of democratic creation are all aspects of leftist thought missing from today's left, much to its detriment. In place of the search for a moral identity that will inspire and unite us, the left todayþwhat he calls the "academic" or "cultural" leftþhas opted instead for a "detached spectatorship," condemnation without action or hope. Rorty traces the origins of this spectatorship to theorists such as Foucault, who insists on the irresistible ubiquitousness of power. The appeal of such spectatorship he traces to the US New Left and its experience with the Vietnam War. In Vietnam the US "sinned," became beyond redemption, and so the New Left turned its back on ever reforming such a place. The Left retreated to academia, theory, culture, and spectatorship. This is all, however, a very familiar scenario by now (if argued in an interestingly odd way), and one wonders why it needs repeating, Rorty seems only to be using the New Left as a straw person here, and his depiction of the "academic" Left is caricature. Assertion substitutes for analysis. Lapses in logic occur: He chastises the Left, for instance, for being both Marxist and "postmodern," yet the two tendencies stand mostly opposed to each other. Like an obscure clubrecording from a major jazz musician, this is a minor work from a profound thinker that perhaps only true devotees of Rorty will find of value.

Table of Contents:

	American National Pride: Whitman and Dewey	1
	The Eclipse of the Reformist Left	39
	A Cultural Left	73
App	Movements and Campaigns	111
App	The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature	125
	Notes	141
	Acknowledgments	153
	Index	155

Social Movements and Networks or Rural Social Work

Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action

Author: Mario Diani

For the first time in a single volume, leading social movement researchers map the full range of applications of network concepts and tools to their field of inquiry. They illustrate how networks affect individual contributions to collective action in both democratic and non-democratic organizations; how patterns of inter-organizational linkages affect the circulation of resources both within movement milieus and between movement organizations and the political system; how network concepts and techniques may improve our grasp of the relationship between movements and elites, of the configuration of alliance and conflict structures, of the clustering of episodes of contention in protest cycles.Social Movements and Networks casts new light on our understanding of social movements and cognate social and political processes.

Table of Contents:

	List of Figures
	List of Tables
	List of Abbreviations
	Contributors
1	Introduction: Social Movements, Contentious Actions, and Social Networks: 'From Metaphor to Substance'?	1
2	Social Networks Matter. But How?	21
3	Movement Development and Organizational Networks: The Role of 'Single Members' in the German Nazi Party, 1925-30	49
4	Networks in Opposition: Linking Organizations Through Activists in the Polish People's Republic	77
5	'Leaders' or Brokers? Positions and Influence in Social Movement Networks	105
6	Community Embeddedness and Collaborative Governance in the San Francisco Bay Area Environmental Movement	123
7	Contentious Connections in Great Britain, 1828-34	147
8	Networks, Diffusion, and Cycles of Collective Action	173
9	Movement in Context: Thick Networks and Japanese Environmental Protest	204
10	Why do Networks Matter? Rationalist and Structuralist Interpretations	233
11	Cross-talk in Movements: Reconceiving the Culture-Network Link	258
12	Beyond Structural Analysis: Toward a More Dynamic Understanding of Social Movements	281
13	Networks and Social Movements: A Research Programme	299
	References	320
	Index	347

See also: Before Fidel or From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers

Rural Social Work: Building and Sustaining Community Assests (with Infotrac(r))

Author: T Laine Scales

Following an introduction by the co-editors, this collection of 27 contributed readings from academics, students and practitioners is presented in 5 parts, introduced by 'Lead Teachers. ' This book presents a framework for asset building based on the strengths, assets, and capacities of people, all of which are critical for working with rural communities.

Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits or At the Risk of Being Heard

Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits: Real Advocacy for Nonprofits in the New Century

Author: Barry Hessenius

This is a no-holds-barred, comprehensive, real-world guide to building political power and successfully lobbying for nonprofits in the 21st century, written by an insider who has been in the trenches as both a lobbyist and a government official.
 
Lobbying in America has everything to do with money and elected officials' need for campaign funds.  Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits recognizes this reality, and is both a tutorial for nonprofit organizations on how to effectively advocate and lobby, and a plea for the nonprofit leaders to embrace the lobbying function as part of their job descriptions.  

Book about: Breathworks for Your Back or Gods Nutritionist

At the Risk of Being Heard: Identity, Indigenous Rights, and Postcolonial States

Author: Bartholomew Crispin Dean

Leading experts in the analysis of ethnicity and indigenous rights explore why and how the circumstances of indigenous peoples are improving in some places of the world, while human rights continue to be abused in others. Drawing on case studies from Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, the contributors investigate how political organization, natural resource management, economic development, and conflicting definitions over cultural, linguistic, religious, and territorial identity have informed indigenous strategies for empowerment.

About the Authors
Bartholomew Dean is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Kansas. Jerome M. Levi is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Carleton College.

What People Are Saying

Jonathan Benthall
Lucid and realistic, with a refreshing lack of self-importance, this impressive collection builds on anthropology's unique disciplinary heritage to tackle an urgent set of global and local issues.
—University College London

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
1	Legalism and Loyalism: European, African, and Human "Rights"	45
2	Indigenous Rights and the Politics of Identity in Post-Apartheid Southern Africa	80
3	Hot and Cold: Interethnic Relations in Siberia	112
4	Indigenous Rights Issues in Malaysia	142
5	Nationalism and Cultural Survival in Our Time: A Sketch	165
6	Indigenous Autonomy in Mexico	191
7	At the Margins of Power: Gender Hierarchy and the Politics of Ethnic Mobilization among the Urarina	217
8	Indigenous Rights and Representations in Northern Mexico: The Diverse Contexts of Raramuri Voice and Silence	255
9	Reconciling Personal and Impersonal Worlds: Aboriginal Struggles for Self-Determination	293
10	From Elimination to an Uncertain Future: Changing Policies toward Indigenous Peoples	324
	Contributors	335
	Index	339

Boricua Pop or The Lesbian and Gay Movements

Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture

Author: Frances Negr n Muntaner

View the

"Boricua Pop" is a foundational text in American, Latino/a, Queer, Performance, and Cultural Studies."
—Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Mount Holyoke College

Boricua Pop is the first book solely devoted to Puerto Rican visibility, cultural impact, and identity formation in the U.S. and at home. Frances Negrón-Muntaner explores everything from the beloved American musical West Side Story to the phenomenon of singer/actress/ fashion designer Jennifer Lopez, from the faux historical chronicle Seva to the creation of Puerto Rican Barbie, from novelist Rosario Ferré to performer Holly Woodlawn, and from painter provocateur Andy Warhol to the seemingly overnight success story of Ricky Martin. Negrón-Muntaner traces some of the many possible itineraries of exchange between American and Puerto Rican cultures, including the commodification of Puerto Rican cultural practices such as voguing, graffiti, and the Latinization of pop music. Drawing from literature, film, painting, and popular culture, and including both the normative and the odd, the canonized authors and the misfits, the island and its diaspora, Boricua Pop is a fascinating blend of low life and high culture: a highly original, challenging, and lucid new work by one of our most talented cultural critics.

Table of Contents:

1	Weighing in theory : Puerto Ricans and American culture	3
2	1898 : the trauma of literature, the shame of identity	33
3	Feeling pretty : West side story and U.S. Puerto Rican identity	58
4	From Puerto Rico with Trash : Holly Woodlawn's A low life in high heels	87
5	The writing on the wall : the life and passion of Jean-Michel Basquiat	115
6	Flagging Madonna : performing a Puerto Rican-American erotics	145
7	Rosario's tongue : Rosario Ferre and the commodification of island literature	179
8	Barbie's hair : selling out Puerto Rican identity in the global market	206
9	Jennifer's butt : valorizing the Puerto Rican racialized female body	228
10	Ricky's hips : the queerness of Puerto Rican "white" culture	247
	Postscript : words from the grave	273

New interesting book: Database Sys with Dbase Place Code or Understanding Bioinformatics

The Lesbian and Gay Movements: Assimilation or Liberation?

Author: Craig A Rimmerman

Throughout their relatively short history, the lesbian and gay movements in the United States have endured searing conflicts over whether to embrace assimilationist or liberationist strategies. This new book explores this dilemma in both contemporary and historical contexts, describing the sources of these conflicts, to what extent the conflicts have been resolved, and how they might be resolved in future. The text also tackles the challenging issue of what constitutes movement “effectiveness” and how “effective” the assimilationist and liberationist strategies have been in three contentious policy arenas: the military ban, same-sex marriage, and AIDS. Considerable attention is devoted to how policy elites-most notably Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton; Congress; and the Supreme Court-have responded to the movements’ grievances. The book examines the George W. Bush presidency with an eye to assessing how political opportunities have informed the broader lesbian and gay movements’ strategies, and also details the response of the Christian Right to the movements’ various assimilationist and liberationist strategies.