Summary: A good, objective review of poverty since the 1996 reforms

In 1996, American welfare policy was changed in a fundamental way. This book seeks to summarize what has has happend since then. It is well-written concise, informative and relatively free of bias. It is a good book.

The overall conclusion of the book is that the 1996 reforms have worked well, but could be improved. As he shows, the 1996 reforms have dramatically reduced welfare rolls, dramatically increased employment among the poor and raised income among the poor. He has an in depth analysis of the different approaches taken by various states. (Under the new law, states are given a good deal of latitude to experiment with poverty policy and they have, in fact, taken quite dissmilar approaches.)

A few of the factual findings of the book are worth underlining.

First, the primary cause of the rise of poverty in recent decades is the collapse of the family. Rodgers does not put it quite that way. He says that poverty increased due to the rapid increase in the number of single-parent families. The evidence supporting this conclusion is overwhelming e.

Second, from a financial perspective, Medicaid is the 800 pound gorilla of American social policy. I did not know, and found it astonishing, that Medicaid was by far the largest federal social welfare program, costing nearly as much as everything else put together. Excluding Social Security, which nearly everyone puts into a separate category.) In part, this is because Medicaid covers many more people than other programs, such as Food Stamps. Nonetheless, it is disturbing that medical care would be so large a part of the budget. Rodgers does not explore this, but clearly something is very wrong here. Medical costs are plainly out of control in this country. To a degree, the increase in costs is due to increase in quality, technology and service level. But, come on, the numbers are absurd. When we are spending more on medical care for the poor than we are on literaly anything else on this side of the biudget, something is very wrong.

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6 mar 13 5:36

Harrell R. Rodgers - American Poverty In A New Era Of Reform (2005).pdf

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Eric A. Finkelstein, Laurie Zuckerman - The Fatten ing of America, How The Economy Makes Us Fat, If I t Matters, and What To Do About It (2008).jpg

USA Books - Eric A. Finkelstein, Laurie Zuckerman - The Fattening ...es Us Fat, If It Matters, and What To Do About It 2008.jpg

"What's behind the sudden, explosive rise in obesity rates? In a word, it's economics. Author Eric Finkelstein, a renowned health economist who has spent much of his career studying the economics of obesity, with the help of coauthor Laurie Zuckerman, reveals why America's growing waistline is a by-product of our economic and technological success. Because of declining food costs, especially for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods, and increasing usage of technology, which make Americans more sedentary, the environment has changed in such a way that we're eating more calories and burning off less." "Finkelstein and Zuckerman blend theory, research, and engaging - sometimes hilarious - personal anecdotes to break down the causes and the consequences of America's obesity epidemic. One by one, they explore the media's claim that obesity is making our businesses less competitive, pushing good jobs overseas, hurting our military readiness, increasing our taxes, and helping to bankrupt the Medicare and Medicaid Programs. Along the way, the authors also reveal how the obesity epidemic has spurred tremendous demand for all sorts of new products and services, creating a flourishing new market that they call "The ObesEconomy."" "The Fattening of America outlines the issues we must deal with to confront obesity. The authors explore the role that businesses and policymakers play in America's obesity epidemic, and explain that successful obesity prevention strategies need to do exactly the opposite of where the economy is taking us. They need to make it cheaper and easier to be thin - not fat. However, because obesity is a natural by-product of an expanding economy, the authors question whether or not obesity prevention efforts, even if successful, would actually leave some individuals worse

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Michael M. Topp - Those Without a Country, The Pol itical Culture of Italian American Syndicalists.jpg

In the first book-length history of the Italian American syndicalist movement-the Italian Socialist Federation-Michael Miller Topp presents a new way of understanding the Progressive Era labor movement in relation to migration, transnationalism, gender, and class identity. Those without a Country demonstrates that characterizations of "old" (pre-1960s) social movements as predominantly class-based are vastly oversimplified-and contribute to current debates about the implications of identity politics for the American Left and American culture generally.

Topp traces the rise and fall of the Italian American syndicalist movement from the turn of the twentieth century to the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. His use of Italian-language sources, combined with his attention to transnationalism and masculinity, provides new vantage points on a range of related topics, including the 1912 Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile workers' strike, the impact of World War I on this immigrant community, and the genesis of both fascism and antifascism. Those without a Country brings forward fascinating new material to revise and refine our views of not only Progressive Era radicalism but immigration, gender, and working-class history as well.

Michael Miller Topp is associate professor in the history department at the University of Texas, El Paso.

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Michael M. Topp - Those Without a Country, The Pol itical Culture of Italian American Syndicalists.pdf

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David M. Oshinsky - Polio, An American Story (2005 ).jpg

All who lived in the early 1950s remember the fear of polio and the elation felt when a successful vaccine was found. Now David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond.
Here is a remarkable portrait of America in the early 1950s, using the widespread panic over polio to shed light on our national obsessions and fears. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin. Indeed, the competition was marked by a deep-seated ill will among the researchers that remained with them until their deaths. The author also tells the story of Isabel Morgan, perhaps the most talented of all polio researchers, who might have beaten Salk to the prize if she had not retired to raise a family. As backdrop to this feverish research, Oshinsky offers an insightful look at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was founded in the 1930s by FDR and Basil O'Connor. The National Foundation revolutionized fundraising and the perception of disease in America, using "poster children" and the famous March of Dimes to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from a vast army of contributors (instead of a few well-heeled benefactors), creating the largest research and rehabilitation network in the history of medicine. The polio experience also revolutionized the way in which the government licensed and tested new drugs before allowing them on the market, and the way in which the legal system dealt with manufacturers' liability for unsafe products. Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Oshinsky reveals that polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed by the media, but in truth a relatively uncommon disease. But in baby-booming America--increasingly suburban, family-oriented, and hygiene-obsessed--the specter of polio, like the specter of the atomic bomb, soon became a cloud of terror over daily life.
Both a gripping scientific suspense story and a provocative social and cultural history, Polio opens a fresh window onto postwar America.

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Jerome P. Kassirer, M. D. - On The Take, How Medic ine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Yo ur Health (2004).jpg

USA Books - Jerome P. Kassirer, M. D. - On The Take, How Medicines...licity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health 2004.jpg

We all know that doctors accept gifts from drug companies, ranging from pens and coffee mugs to free vacations at luxurious resorts. But as the former Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine reveals in this shocking expose, these innocuous-seeming gifts are just the tip of an iceberg that is distorting the practice of medicine and jeopardizing the health of millions of Americans today.
In On the Take, Dr. Jerome Kassirer offers an unsettling look at the pervasive payoffs that physicians take from big drug companies and other medical suppliers, arguing that the billion-dollar onslaught of industry money has deflected many physicians' moral compasses and directly impacted the everyday care we receive from the doctors and institutions we trust most. Underscored by countless chilling untold stories, the book illuminates the financial connections between the wealthy companies that make drugs and the doctors who prescribe them. Kassirer details the shocking extent of these financial enticements and explains how they encourage bias, promote dangerously misleading medical information, raise the cost of medical care, and breed distrust. Among the questionable practices he describes are: the disturbing number of senior academic physicians who have financial arrangements with drug companies; the unregulated "front" organizations that advocate certain drugs; the creation of biased medical education materials by the drug companies themselves; and the use of financially conflicted physicians to write clinical practice guidelines or to testify before the FDA in support of a particular drug.
A brilliant diagnosis of an epidemic of greed, On the Take offers insight into how we can cure the medical profession and restore our trust in doctors and hospitals.

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Charles R. Geisst - Wall Street, A History (2004).jpg

Wall Street is the stuff of legend and a source of nightmares, a force so powerful in American society--and, indeed, in world economics and culture--that it has become an almost universal symbol of both the highest aspirations of commercial success and the basest impulses of greed and deception. How did such a small, concentrated pocket of lower Manhattan came to have such enormous influence in national and world affairs. In this wide-ranging volume, economic historian Charles Geisst answers this question as he provides the first history of Wall Street, ranging from the loose association of traders meeting on New York sidewalks and coffee houses in the late 18th century, to the modern billion-dollar computer-driven colossus of today.
Here is a fascinating chronicle of America's securities industry and of its role in our nation's economic development. Geisst's narrative ranges over two centuries, from just after the Revolutionary War, to the California Gold Rush and the economic boom (for the North) of the Civil War, to the great stock market crash of 1929, right up to the recent junk bond frenzy and the merger mania of the 1980s that culminated in the fall of Drexel Burnham. The book traces many themes--the move of industry and business westward in the early 19th century, the rise of the great Robber Barons, the influence of the securities market on incredible growth of industry, particularly in the innovative financing of the railroads and major steel companies and crucial investments in Bell's and Edison's technical innovations. Geisst also looks at the gradual increase in government involvement in Wall Street, revealing how regulation had been minimal at first and many investors had suffered from the abuses of corrupt firms. But with the beginning of the New Deal, the government stepped in to pass a series of laws--centered on the Securities Exchange Commission--that severely restricted the ways that Wall Street firms could operate. Here began a heated debate that still rages today between those who want unfettered license to operate as they please and those who want the government to regulate the market to curb corruption. Of course, "The Street" has always been a breeding ground for characters with brazen nerve, and no history of the stock market would be complete without a look at the most ruthless wheeler dealers. Geisst for instance details the manipulations by which Jay Gould and associates cornered the gold market, leading to the terrifying market crash on "Black Friday" in September 1869. Here too are battles of will between powerful personalities and the determined rise to power of such "self made men" as John Jacob Astor, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt--as well as the connivings of lesser known deal makers like William Crapo "Billy" Durant, reputed to have made $50 million in three months shortly before the stock market crash in 1929.

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George Comstock, Erica Scharrer - The Psychology o f Media and Politics (2005).jpg

Research indicates that people discount their own opinions and experiences in favor of those of "experts" as espoused in the media. The framing of news coverage thus has a profound impact on public opinion, and political decision making as a response to public outcry. However, the choice of how to frame the news is typically made to solicit viewership and high ratings rather than to convey accurate and meaningful information. This book discusses why people discount their own opinions, how the media shapes the news, when this drives political decision making, and what the effect is on the future of society.

Issues addressed include:
* How powerful are the media in shaping political beliefs/judgment?
* How has this power changed in recent years?
* How does media influence voting behavior?
* To what extent do media opinions affect political decision making?

* Demonstrates the ways in which the media both constrain and facilitate democratic participation
* Provides insight into why individuals have varying levels of attention to and interest in politics
* Discusses such issues as political advertising, polls, debates, and journalists' pursuit of scandal
* Describes why only some Americans turn out to vote in prominent elections.
* Offers a model of personal- versus social-level influences that extends beyond politics into other important topic areas
* Brings together research and theories from the fields of Communication, Psychology, and Political Science
* Reviews hundreds of key sources, both historical and contemporary

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Sean Nixon - Advertising Cultures, Gender, Commerc e, Creativity (2003).jpg

`Nixon's study is a major contribution to the cultural sociology of the new service sector professionals and their gendered identities.It's importance lies in it's skilful synthesis of detailed ethnographic research and social theory. This is a genuinely innovative book which reopens cultural debate about advertising and society' - Frank Mort, Professor of Cultural History, University of East London

`Advertising Cultures is a lucid, thorough and highly engaging account of advertising creatives that unlocks two crucial issues for understanding the culture industries: creativity and gender. It marks a major new contribution to the cultural study of economic life' - Don Slater, London School of Economics

The economic and cultural role of the `creative industries' has gained a new prominence and centrality in recent years. This new salience is explored here through the most emblematic creative industry: advertising.

Advertising Cultures also marks a significant contribution to the study of gender and of commercial cultures through its detailing of the way gender is written into the creative cultures of advertising and into the subjective identities of its key practitioners.

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Sean Nixon - Advertising Cultures, Gender, Commerc e, Creativity (2003).pdf

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Susan Jacoby - The Age of American Unreason (2008).jpg

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon--one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, she surveys an anti-rationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought." Disdain for logic and evidence defines a pervasive malaise fostered by the mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credulous public.

Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment--from television to the Web--and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant public square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion.

At this critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the "overarching crisis of memory and knowledge" described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flights from reason has cost us as individuals and as a nation.

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Richard G. Rogers, Robert A. Hummer, Charles B. Na m - Living and Dying in the USA, Behavioral, Healt h, and Social Differentials of Adult Mortality (20 00).jpg

USA Books - Richard G. Rogers, Robert A. Hummer, Charles B. Nam - ...alth, and Social Differentials of Adult Mortality 2000.jpg

The simplicity of using one data set in addressing the relationship of single variables to mortality distinguishes Living and Dying in the USA from other recent investigations of mortality. The authors use the recently released National Health Interview Survey and the National Death Index to make a definitive statement about demographics and mortality. By surveying demographic and sociocultural characteristics associated with mortality, socioeconomic effects, health-related conditions, and health status, they reveal connections among several factors related to mortality chances. Easily understood and cited, their study emphasizes the statistical methods underlying their revelations and invites readers to duplicate their results.

Key Features
* Comprehensive coverage of US adult mortality differentials
* Based on a new and innovative data set
* Includes factors rarely examined in related mortality research
* Not only documents mortality differentials, but explores explanations for them
* Extensive list of references associated with each chapter
* Consistent, straightforward methodology used throughout aids readers in both understanding the content and in comparing results from chapter to chapter

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Richard G. Rogers, Robert A. Hummer, Charles B. Na m - Living and Dying in the USA, Behavioral, Healt h, and Social Differentials of Adult Mortality (20 00).pdf

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Thomas Pinney - A History of Wine in America, From the Beginnings to Prohibition (1989).jpg

The Vikings called North America "Vinland," the land of wine. Giovanni de Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who first described the grapes of the New World, was sure that "they would yield excellent wines." And when the English settlers found grapes growing so thickly that they covered the ground down to the very seashore, they concluded that "in all the world the like abundance is not to be found." Thus, from the very beginning the promise of America was, in part, the alluring promise of wine. How that promise was repeatedly baffled, how its realization was gradually begun, and how at last it has been triumphantly fulfilled is the story told in this book.
It is a story that touches on nearly every section of the United States and includes the whole range of American society from the founders to the latest immigrants. Germans in Pennsylvania, Swiss in Georgia, Minorcans in Florida, Italians in Arkansas, French in Kansas, Chinese in California--all contributed to the domestication of Bacchus in the New World. So too did innumerable individuals, institutions, and organizations. Prominent politicians, obscure farmers, eager amateurs, sober scientists: these and all the other kinds and conditions of American men and women figure in the story. The history of wine in America is, in many ways, the history of American origins and of American enterprise in microcosm.
While much of that history has been lost to sight, especially after Prohibition, the recovery of the record has been the goal of many investigators over the years, and the results are here brought together for the first time.

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Thomas Pinney - A History of Wine in America, From the Beginnings to Prohibition (1989).rar

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Mark B. Brown - Science in Democracy, Expertise, I nstitutions, and Representation (2009).jpg

Public controversies over issues ranging from global warming to biotechnology have politicized scientific expertise and research. Some respond with calls for restoring a golden age of value-free science. More promising efforts seek to democratize science. But what does that mean? Can it go beyond the typical focus on public participation? How does the politics of science challenge prevailing views of democracy? In Science in Democracy, Mark Brown draws on science and technology studies, democratic theory, and the history of political thought to show why an adequate response to politicized science depends on rethinking both science and democracy.

Brown enlists such canonical and contemporary thinkers as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Dewey, and Latour to argue that the familiar dichotomy between politics and science reinforces a similar dichotomy between direct democracy and representative government. He then develops an alternative perspective based on the mutual shaping of participation and representation in both science and politics. Political representation requires scientific expertise, and scientific institutions may become sites of political representation. Brown illustrates his argument with examples from expert advisory committees, bioethics councils, and lay forums. Different institutional venues, he shows, mediate different elements of democratic representation. If we understand democracy as an institutionally distributed process of collective representation, Brown argues, it becomes easier to see the politicization of science not as a threat to democracy but as an opportunity for it.

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Mark B. Brown - Science in Democracy, Expertise, I nstitutions, and Representation (2009).pdf

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Tim McNeese - The St. Lawrence River (2005).jpg

A major North American river, the St. Lawrence river is the chief outlet for shipping on the Great Lakes. It also forms 120 miles of the United States-Canadian border.

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Tim McNeese - The St. Lawrence River (2005).pdf

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Asaf Siniver - Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. Foreign Policy Making, The Machinery of Crisis (2008).jpg

The Machinery of Crisis examines for the first time the important role of crisis management in the making of U.S. foreign policy during the Nixon-Kissinger years. Notorious for their tight grip on the machinery of U.S. foreign policy, the book offers a critical account of the manner in which the president and his national security advisor dominated the structures and processes of foreign policy making. By drawing on a wealth of previously classified documents, Siniver reveals the story of the Washington Special Action Group, which managed foreign policy crises in the Nixon administration. In this thoroughly researched account of the performance of Nixon, Kissinger and the Washington Special Actions group in four international crises, Siniver provides a fresh analysis of the important relationship between individuals and the advisory system in the making of U.S. foreign policy during international crisis.

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Asaf Siniver - Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. Foreign Policy Making, The Machinery of Crisis (2008).pdf

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Edward J., Jr. Renehan - The Monroe Doctrine, The Cornerstone of American Foreign Policy (2007).jpg

In 1823, President James Monroe expressed his opinion to Congress that European powers should not be permitted to interfere in the affairs of the sovereign states of the Americas. However, in a bit of a twist, the United States did not follow the terms of its own policy. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which effectively allowed the United States to intervene in Latin American affairs and made the region part of its sphere of influence. Students seeking to learn about the specific details behind this influential policy should look no further than "The Monroe Doctrine", one of the insightful titles from the new "Milestones in American History" series.

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Edward J., Jr. Renehan - The Monroe Doctrine, The Cornerstone of American Foreign Policy (2007).pdf

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Emily K. Abel - Tuberculosis and the Politics of E xclusion, A History of Public Health and Migration to Los Angeles (2007).jpg

USA Books - Emily K. Abel - Tuberculosis and the Politics of Exclu...ry of Public Health and Migration to Los Angeles 2007.jpg

Though notorious for its polluted air today, the city of Los Angeles once touted itself as a health resort. After the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1876, publicists launched a campaign to portray the city as the promised land, circulating countless stories of miraculous cures for the sick and debilitated. As more and more migrants poured in, however, a gap emerged between the city's glittering image and its dark reality. In "Tuberculosis and the Politics of Exclusion", Emily K. Abel shows how the association of the disease with "tramps" during the 1880s and 1890s and Dust Bowl refugees during the 1930s provoked exclusionary measures against both groups. In addition, public health officials sought not only to restrict the entry of Mexicans (the majority of immigrants) during the 1920s but also to expel them during the 1930s. Abel's revealing account provides a critical lens through which to view both the contemporary debate about immigration and the U.S. response to the emergent global tuberculosis epidemic.

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Emily K. Abel - Tuberculosis and the Politics of E xclusion, A History of Public Health and Migration to Los Angeles (2007).pdf

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Tim McNeese - The Yukon River (2005).jpg

A detailed look at a major river of northwest North America, the Yukon River is navigable by river boats for only 3 month of the year.

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Tim McNeese - The Yukon River (2005).pdf

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Derek Kompare - Rerun Nation, How Repeats Invented American Television (2004).jpg

Long before TV Land, the Game Show Network, and Cartoon Network cornered the market, reruns had been a staple of American television for decades. The economics of broadcasting made recycling programs a standard practice as early as the 1950s, but it was not until the mid 1970s that reruns were singled out as a significant contribution to American culture in general-a window into the American past and TV's "Golden Age." In Rerun Nation, Derek Kompare looks at how the long tradition of rerun syndication has come to determine television's place in American history and culture, and framed our understanding of what defines "American television." Rerun Nation is a fascinating approach to television history and theory through the ubiquitous yet overlooked phenomenon of reruns. Kompare covers both historical and conceptual ground, weaving together a refresher course in the history of television with a critical analysis of how reruns have shaped the cultural, economic, and legal terrains of American television. Given the expanding use of past media texts not only in the United States, but also in virtually every media-rich society, this book addresses a critical facet of everyday life.

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