A compassionate America has spent more than $5 trillion on welfare programs over three decades, but the poor haven''t vanished, and the self-destructive behavior that imprisons many in poverty has become an intergenerational inheritance. Drawing on the City Journal''s superlative reporting, What Makes Charity Work? shows in concrete and compelling detail how government assistance to the poor is doomed to failure - because it treats them as victims of forces beyond their control, robs them of a sense of personal responsibility, and neglects the virtues they need to escape poverty. Contrasting case studies of charities both old and new show how charity can succeed spectacularly when it encourages the poor to take control of their own lives and teaches them habits of self-reliance and the traditional virtues. Here are accounts of charities that follow these precepts and have not only brought individuals into the economic and social mainstream but have delivered whole classes of people from poverty and degradation into the middle class in a single generation. As welfare reform unfolds, and as the nation calculates how to implement the "charitable choice" provision of the 1996 welfare reform act that allows government to use private and religious charities in helping the poor, policymakers and concerned Americans will find both encouraging and cautionary case studies in What Makes Charity Work? Here is an urgent issue considered in vivid, practical, and unfailingly absorbing fashion.
As bleak and agonizing a portrait of war as ever to appear on the stage, The Trojan Women is a masterpiece of pathos as well as a timeless and chilling indictment of war's brutality.
The clearest picture we have of what life is like for men and women who have been diagnosed HIV positive, based upon unique in-depth interviews and remarkable for its candor. "An unforgettable picture of what extremity looks like and how it is dealt with."-Clifford Geertz.
In this second volume of his major work on Bunin, the neglected master of Russian letters, Thomas Marullo recreates his life in exile, chiefly in Paris, after escaping from his newly bolshevized country in 1920. Drawing from Bunin''s correspondence, his diaries, and his stories, and translating most of these materials into English for the first time, Mr. Marullo gives us a vivid picture of a man suddenly and agonizingly without a country. Bunin''s life and art, which depended so heavily on traditional Russian values, seemed to be overthrown in a moment, and the writer found himself marooned amidst Western culture, clinging to his old ideals. Through his writings we are also provided a window on the lively but despairing and often fractious community of Russian emigrés in Paris in the twenties, which included Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff Chafiapin, Prokofiev, Chagall, Kandinsky, Pavlova, Diaghilev, and Zamyatin. The volume ends in 1933, when Bunin became the first Russian to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. Mr. Marullo''s first volume, Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, was widely acclaimed. Gary Saul Morson of Northwestern wrote: "It engages the reader from the first page ...Marullo has an eye for the perfect quotation." Ruth Rischin, in the Russian Review, described the book as "elegantly crafted... a serious achievement."
Selections from the Civil War diaries and memoirs of twenty-three Southern women form an account of the war as it was lived and endured on the domestic front in the South.
"If you were much of a boy growing up in the Maspeth section of Queens in the late 1930s and 1940s, you had the baseball fever. It seemed contagious, but it struck mostly from within. . . . Often, in later years, when I was writing a long series of books on the game, some well-intended philistine would ask to have explained to him the fascination with baseball. I offered my stock answer: 'If you have to ask the question, you'll never understand the answer.'" With this small confession Donald Honig begins his charming memoir of a life devoted to the charms of baseball, including the many great figures of the game he has known in the past half-century.
On a terrible day in December 1958, one of the deadliest fires in American history took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at Our Lady of the Angels school in Chicago. The tragedy shocked the nation, tore apart a community with grief and anger, left many families physically and psychologically scarred for life, and prompted a mystery unresolved to this day. It also led to a complete overhaul of fire safety standards for American schools. The story of that fire was eloquently told ten years ago by John Kuenster and David Cowan in their best-selling book To Sleep with the Angels. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the fire, John Kuenster returns to talk with firemen, parents, children, reporters, clergy, school administrators, and others who were in some way connected with the disaster.
The unexpected surge in the birthrate between 1946 and 1964 transformed American society. A nation that had projected a population peaking at 150 million, and feared a renewal of the Great Depression in the wake of World War II, found itself dealing with a booming economy and 70 million children straining the capacity of everything from schools to new suburban housing. In Boomers, Victor D. Brooks chronicles the peaceful children's "invasion" of America that occurred from Dr. Spock to Woodstock. He identifies the challenge of parenthood in an era of large families and overcrowded homes, and explores the home life, leisure activities, and school environment of children who grew up during the cold war years. A major theme of Boomers is the influence on children of a newly energized American popular culture, including television, film, popular music, and toys.
Inspired and inspirational, worldly wise, deeply felt, and often delightfully funny-here in one compact volume are 100 of the greatest poems written in English over the last century, memorable masterpieces that everyone should know and enjoy. Selected and introduced by Joseph Parisi, former longtime editor of Poetry magazine, this brilliant collection brings together the greatest poems by all the classic authors, along with the choicest works by today's most accomplished artists in America and abroad. From W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot to John Ashbery and A. R. Ammons; Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore to Sylvia Plath and Mary Oliver; Robert Frost and W. B. Yeats to Allen Ginsberg and Thom Gunn, this comprehensive anthology features the poems that have best expressed the spirit of our times and helped create modern culture. In addition to such ground-breaking works as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Howl," Mr. Parisi has included the incisive social satire and whimsical wordplay of such wits as Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash, and Frank O'Hara. Among contemporary poets in the book are Seamus Heaney, Jane Kenyon, Rita Dove, Sharon Olds, Paul Muldoon, Adrienne Rich, and the redoubtable Billy Collins, all of whom have already achieved wide popular acclaim for poems that speak compellingly about modern life and the perennial concerns of the human heart. Mr. Parisi provides a general introduction to the book and introduces each poem with a brief biographical and critical note. For anyone who wishes to discover or to re-experience the most important and vital poems of our time, 100 Essential Modern Poems is, quite simply, indispensable.
Young or old, they are all bachelors - a young officer (Lieutenant Gustl), a socially desirable lawyer (The Murderer), a middle-aged physician (Doctor Graesler), an aging rou (Casanova's Homecoming). This book focuses an eye on the minds of men who desire, fantasize about, and try to relate to women.
How children living in the North experienced the Civil War, considered in the larger contexts of economic, political, and cultural developments during the nineteenth century. Mr. Marten opens a new window on the impact of the war and shows that the youngest Americans were inevitable and enthusiastic participants.
This work explores the many-levelled relationship between seeing and thinking. It reproduces some 20 photographs, and discusses these pictures and picture-taking occasions, and are not strictly historical, nor are they concern only with theoretical considerations.
In 1769 two ships set out independently in search of a missing continent: a French merchant ship, the St. Jean-Baptiste, commanded by Jean de Surville, and a small British naval vessel, the Endeavour, commanded by Captain James Cook. That Christmas, in New Zealand waters, the two captains were almost within sight of each other, though neither knew of the other's existence. This is the stirring tale of these rival ships and the men who sailed in them. Cook's first long voyage was one of the most remarkable in recorded history. He not only sailed around the world, following the most difficult route any navigator had ever attempted; he also changed the maps of the world. In heavy seas he made a more thorough search for the missing continent-believed to lie somewhere between New Zealand and South America-than had ever been made. He was the first to explore most of the New Zealand coast and a vast stretch of the east coast of Australia, and the first to explore the longest reef in the world, the Great Barrier Reef. In Jakarta and Cape Town, and in the seas between them, Cook lost a third of his crew to tropical illnesses, after earlier saving them from scurvy. The ship in which he circled the world was not much larger in area than a tennis court. Along with the de Surville vessel, the sea was an arena of international rivalry, for during his voyage Cook encountered Dutch, Spanish, French, and Portuguese competitors and suspicions. Geoffrey Blainey brings his marvelous storytelling powers to bear on this fascinating and important adventure, drawing us brilliantly into the lives of the major figures.
The rise of scientific thinking in finding, catching, and convicting criminals-and, just as important, freeing the innocent-has transformed society's assault on crime. Before scientific detective work, early attempts to maintain public safety relied on the severity of punishment rather than any probability of apprehension. But with the rapid development of the sciences in the nineteenth century, some techniques began to spill over into more effective police work. Michael Kurland's engrossing history of forensic science recounts this remarkable progress, which continues to the present. He traces the history of the major techniques of criminal detection and many of the minor ones. Here are Bertillon's physical measurements used to recognize habitual criminals; the study of fingerprints identifying criminals long after they have left the scene of the crime; Gravelle's comparison microscope comparing bullets to determine if they have been fired from the same gun; the development of bloodstain identification and, ultimately, the blood type involved. Mr. Kurland explains how once-accepted techniques have fallen by the wayside-handwriting analysis, for example-and how methods such as lie detectors, voice spectrum analysis, bite mark evidence, and other methods have proven unworthy. Finally Irrefutable Evidence explores the rise of modern DNA typing techniques, which have proven the innocence of many persons convicted of major crimes and resulted in the exoneration of more than two hundred on death row. With 12 black-and-white illustrations.
Emphasizing the revealing experiences of representative Americans from around the country, who tell how the previous eight years of failed policies shaped their personal fate and prompted them to vote for a newcomer blazing the banner of change, Destiny Calling traces a political campaign that fulfilled Lincoln's promise even as it illuminated for the world - anew - America's commitment of hope and freedom. For additional information, see www.destinycallingbook.com.
Matthews's book chronicles the changing fortunes and transformations of the organized suffrage movement, from its dismal period to its final victory that brought women the vote.
The causes and consequences of the 1962 crisis as well as a day-by-day narrative of the confrontation, based on up-to-date scholarship and newly released documents. American Ways Series.
Safe for Democracy for the first time places the story of the CIA's covert operations squarely in the context of America's global quest for democratic values and institutions. National security historian John Prados offers a comprehensive history of the CIA's secret wars that is as close to a definitive account as is possible today.
A distinguished constitutional historian examines Jefferson's record on civil liberties and finds it strikingly wanting. "Blunt words and blunt facts...an indispensable book." -Commentary
This award-winning novel follows twelve-year-old Steven Moore and his slave companion on a nightmarish journey behind Union lines.
In this personal account of the intelligence failure in Vietnam, Mr. Allen reveals specifically how American leaders largely excluded intelligence from important policy deliberations until it was too late. "Don't miss this book!"-John Prados
A former prisoner tells the untold story of the Nazi concentration camp that secretly manufactured V-2 rockets.
An important new reappraisal of the immediate origins of World War II. "Entertaining and absorbing....Chamberlain hardly emerges a hero from these pages, but at least there is no excuse left for regarding him as no more than a wimp in a wing-collar." -The Guardian.
Drawing upon recent economic scholarship to present a clear and nontechnical analysis, Mr. Smiley offers new insights and some surprising conclusions about the causes of the Great Depression, the consequences of the New Deal, and the economic effects of World War II.
What life was like for youngsters who lived on the Great Plains in nineteenth-century frontier life. Chapters address a breadth of experiences and perceptions: why families came to the Great Plains and where they decided to settle; how families and communities were organized for education, work, and play; how health care, accidents, and mortality affected childhoods; and what children experienced outside the home. As much as possible, Ms. Holt lets the children speak for themselves. American Childhoods Series.
In this charming and affecting book, Victoria Radford has selected the most interesting recollections from scores of individuals who met President Lincoln. Even Lincoln buffs will find Meeting Mr. Lincoln a surprise and delight. Illustrated with photographs and engravings. "...Radford collects and introduces published accounts that show amply and movingly how Lincoln's personal charisma and compassion matched, and informed, his public deeds." -Publishers Weekly.
How Hollywood helped prop up the nation's fundamental institutions during the Great Depression. "First rate. It should stand for a long time as a pioneer work in a field where all too little has been written."-Alfred B. Rollins, Jr.
In this fourth volume of a projected six, Huxley registers his deep misgivings about the course of history in the late 1930s as the world moved toward a second global war. Many of his essays reflect his continuing interest in the conventions of popular culture as well as the philosophy of science and history, particularly as they inform developments in art and politics.
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