Best of
Class

2004

Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class


Michelle TeaLis Goldschmidt - 2004
    It was these concerns that prompted indie icon Michelle Tea--whose memoir The Chelsea Whistle details her own working-class roots in gritty Chelsea, Massachusetts--to collect these fierce, honest, tender essays written by women who can’t go home to the suburbs when their assignment is over. These wide-ranging essays cover everything from stealing and selling blood to make ends meet, to "jumping" class, how if time equals money then being poor means waiting, surviving and returning to the ghetto and how feminine identity is shaped by poverty. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Diane Di Prima, Terri Griffith, Daisy Hernández, Frances Varian, Tara Hardy, Shawna Kenney, Siobhan Brooks, Terri Ryan, and more.

The Working Poor: Invisible in America


David K. Shipler - 2004
    Shipler makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideology—hard, honest work. But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low-paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse. Shipler exposes the interlocking problems by taking us into the sorrowful, infuriating, courageous lives of the poor—white and black, Asian and Latino, citizens and immigrants. We encounter them every day, for they do jobs essential to the American economy.We meet drifting farmworkers in North Carolina, exploited garment workers in New Hampshire, illegal immigrants trapped in the steaming kitchens of Los Angeles restaurants, addicts who struggle into productive work from the cruel streets of the nation's capital—each life another aspect of a confounding, far-reaching urgent national crisis. And unlike mostworks on poverty, this one delves into the calculations of some employers as well—their razor-thin profits, their anxieties about competition from abroad, their frustrations in finding qualified workers.This impassioned book not only dissects the problems, but makes pointed, informed recommendations for change. It is a book that stands to make a difference.

Belonging: A Culture of Place


bell hooks - 2004
    Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home. hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky.With characteristic insight and honesty, Belonging offers a remarkable vision of a world where all people--wherever they may call home--can live fully and well, where everyone can belong.

Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice


Loretta J. Ross - 2004
    But, if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.”—Lila Watson, Aboriginal ActivistVibrant. Strong. Fierce. Undivided Rights captures the evolving and largely unknown activist history of women of color organizing for reproductive justice—on their own behalf.Undivided Rights presents a fresh and textured understanding of the reproductive rights movement by placing the experiences, priorities, and activism of women of color in the foreground. Using historical research, original organizational case studies, and personal interviews, the authors illuminate how women of color have led the fight to control their own bodies and reproductive destinies. Undivided Rights shows how women of color—-starting within their own Latina, African American, Native American, and Asian American communities—have resisted coercion of their reproductive abilities. Projected against the backdrop of the mainstream pro-choice movement and radical right agendas, these dynamic case studies feature the groundbreaking work being done by health and reproductive rights organizations led by women-of-color.The book details how and why these women have defined and implemented expansive reproductive health agendas that reject legalistic remedies and seek instead to address the wider needs of their communities. It stresses the urgency for innovative strategies that push beyond the traditional base and goals of the mainstream pro-choice movement—strategies that are broadly inclusive while being specific, strategies that speak to all women by speaking to each woman. While the authors raise tough questions about inclusion, identity politics, and the future of women’s organizing, they also offer a way out of the limiting focus on “choice.”Undivided Rights articulates a holistic vision for reproductive freedom. It refuses to allow our human rights to be divvied up and parceled out into isolated boxes that people are then forced to pick and choose among.

American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare


Jason DeParle - 2004
    In this masterful work, New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Jason DeParle cuts between the mean streets of Milwaukee and the corridors of Washington to produce the definitive account. As improbable as fiction, and equally fast-paced, this classic of literary journalism has captured the acclaim of the Left and Right. At the heart of the story are three cousins, inseparable at the start but launched on differing arcs. Leaving welfare, Angie puts her heart in her work. Jewell bets on an imprisoned man. Opal guards a tragic secret that threatens her kids and her life. DeParle traces back their family history six generations to slavery, and weaves poor people, politicians, reformers, and rogues into a spellbinding epic. At times, the very idea of America seemed on trial: we live in a country where anyone can make it, yet generation after generation some families don't. Washington Post: "Riveting... like a searing novel of urban realism - Theodore Dreiser comes to Milwaukee." Chicago Tribune: "Sweeping scope and dramatic detail worthy of Charles Dickens."

Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood


Jay MacLeod - 2004
    MacLeod's return eight years later, and the resulting 1995 revision, revealed little improvement in the lives of these men as they struggled in the labor market and crime-ridden underground economy. This classic ethnography addresses one of the most important issues in modern social theory and policy: how social inequality is reproduced from one generation to the next. Now republished with a preface by Joe Feagin, Ain't No Makin' It remains an admired and invaluable text.

Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity


Loïc Wacquant - 2004
    It partakes of a broader reconstruction of the state wedding restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” under a philosophy of moral behaviorism. This paternalist program of penalization of poverty aims to curb the urban disorders wrought by economic deregulation and to impose precarious employment on the postindustrial proletariat. It also erects a garish theater of civic morality on whose stage political elites can orchestrate the public vituperation of deviant figures—the teenage “welfare mother,” the ghetto “street thug,” and the roaming “sex predator”—and close the legitimacy deficit they suffer when they discard the established government mission of social and economic protection. By bringing developments in welfare and criminal justice into a single analytic framework attentive to both the instrumental and communicative moments of public policy, Punishing the Poor shows that the prison is not a mere technical implement for law enforcement but a core political institution. And it reveals that the capitalist revolution from above called neoliberalism entails not the advent of “small government” but the building of an overgrown and intrusive penal state deeply injurious to the ideals of democratic citizenship.Visit the author’s website.

Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer


A.J. Liebling - 2004
    Just Enough Liebling gathers in one volume the vividest and most enjoyable of his pieces. Charles McGrath (in The New York Times Book Review) praised it as a judicious sampling-a useful window on Liebling's vast body of writing and a reminder, to those lucky enough to have read him the first time around, of why he was so beloved. Today Liebling is best known as a celebrant of the sweet science of boxing, and as a feeder who ravishes the reader with his descriptions of food and wine. But as David Remnick observes in his fond and insightful introduction, Liebling is boundlessly curious, a listener, a boulevardier, a man of appetites and sympathy-and a writer who, with his great friend and colleague Joseph Mitchell, deftly traversed the boundaries between reporting and storytelling, between news and art.

The Book of Jon


Eleni Sikelianos - 2004
    Jon, a multitalented, eccentric visionary, emerges as a brilliant, charming, irresponsible, frustrating, and ultimately tragic hero.This is a saga of the rise and fall of family lines—a tale marked by bohemia, Greek poets, intellectuals, drugs and homelessness. It is the story of eccentrics and survivors, the strength of personal vision and the nature of addiction, and what it does to families. An exquisitely rendered exploration of the harrowing and motivating forces of family, history, and individual choices.Eleni Sikelianos’ previous books include Earliest Worlds and the National Poetry Series winner The Monster Lives of Boys & Girls. She lives in Boulder, CO.

The Quest for Holiness: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Investigation


Adolf Koberle - 2004
    As such it well deserves translation into the English language and widespread distribution among English language readers. Although written by a profound scholar, this book is not merely for theologians but for all who desire a sound, scriptural setting forth of the truths and the implications for each individual embodied in the steps of justification and sanctification. For simplicity, clarity, and completeness on this subject, this book is unsurpassed. It is written not merely with ink but with the lifeblood of the true believer striving daily for greater holiness and God-pleasing perfection.

Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions


Smithsonian Institution - 2004
    Written by chef Fernando Divina and Marlene Divina, who is of Chippewa heritage, FOODS OF THE AMERICAS presents 140 modern recipes that incorporate a wide array of foods cultivated by native people throughout North and South America. The book also includes nine illustrated short essays by native writers that provide an American Indian perspective on a variety of indigenous food traditions. Illustrated with food photographs as well as images from the museum's vast collections, the book is being published to coincide with the opening of the museum's flagship site on the National Mall on September 21, 2004.A comprehensive, illustrated cookbook with 140 recipes dedicated to the native ingredients and traditions of the Americas. Includes 24 full-color food photographs and 30 images from the Smithsonian collections.         Awards2005 James Beard Cookbook of the YearReviews“This very important book will open the reader's mind to the culinary wisdom and ingenuity of the Native peoples of the Americas. Then it will open the reader's mouth to an enticing world of new flavors, which are in fact ancient and indigenous.” —Deborah Madison, author of Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets

Musicology: The Key Concepts


David Beard - 2004
    Its clear and accessible entries cover a comprehensive range of terms including:- aesthetics- canon- culture- deconstruction- ethnicity- identity- subjectivity- value- workFully cross-referenced and with suggestions for further reading, this is an essential resource for all students of music.

Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity


Reviel Netz - 2004
    Surveying its development from 1874 to 1954, Netz describes its use to control cattle during the colonization of the American West and to control people in Nazi concentration camps and the Russian Gulag. Physical control over space was no longer symbolic after 1874. This is a history told from the perspective of its victims. With vivid examples of the inter- connectedness of humans, animals, and the environment, this dramatic account of barbed wire presents modern history through the lens of motion being prevented. Drawing together the history of humans and animals, Netz delivers a compelling new perspective on the issues of colonialism, capitalism, warfare, globalization, violence, and suffering. Theoretically sophisticated but written with a broad readership in mind, Barbed Wire calls for nothing less than a reconsideration of modernity.

Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms & Communities


David Sobel - 2004
    Place-Based Education uses the local community and environment as the starting place for curriculum learning, strengthening community bonds, appreciation for the natural world, and a commitment to citizen engagement.

The Champ: The Story of Muhammad Ali


Tonya Bolden - 2004
    From his unlikely beginnings as a skinny, young Cassius Clay learning to box at a local gym to becoming the heavyweight champion of the world at the famous “Rumble in the Jungle,” where even the skies let loose with rain right after his victory, Ali has captivated the world. Tonya Bolden’s careful research and elegant telling, paired with R. Gregory Christie’s incredible paintings, make this a book that will inform and inspire readers of all ages.

Hurricane Sisters


Ginger Andrews - 2004
    No Kleenex. No cotton balls.No new shoes. No espresso. No Red Bulls, or Taco Bell.No vacation, Lord knows, and no cash for the collection plate.But, she says, I can take on more cleaning jobs. I can do that.

To Move a Mountain: Fighting the Global Economy in Appalachia


Eve S. Weinbaum - 2004
    With striking portraits of managers, workers, organizers and local officials, the book sets the Appalachian plant closings squarely in the economic and political context of economic development strategies and uncovers a government and economic leadership whose policies show little regard for the workers they leave behind. Yet the repeated defeat of the workers sparked an astonishingly fiery economic justice movement in Tennessee, as factory workers were transformed into sophisticated activists, generating coalitions, starting allied campaigns for living wages, and writing groundbreaking legislation.With careful consideration of what made some movements flourish and others die, To Move a Mountain is at once a detailed and intricate ethnography and an inspiring story on the evolution of seemingly insignificant local organizing efforts into sustained social movements.

Islam and the Challenge of Democracy: A Boston Review Book


Khaled Abou El Fadl - 2004
    Such topics as the meaning of jihad, the role of clerics as authoritative interpreters, and the place of human rights and toleration in Islam have become subjects of urgent public debate around the world. With few exceptions, however, this debate has proceeded in isolation from the vibrant traditions of argument within Islamic theology, philosophy, and law."Islam and the Challenge of Democracy" aims to correct this deficiency. The book engages the reader in a rich discourse on the challenges of democracy in contemporary Islam. The collection begins with a lead essay by Khaled Abou El Fadl, who argues that democracy, especially a constitutional democracy that protects basic individual rights, is the form of government best suited to promoting a set of social and political values central to Islam. Because Islam is about submission to God and about each individual's responsibility to serve as His agent on Earth, Abou El Fadl argues, there is no place for the subjugation to human authority demanded by authoritarian regimes. The lead essay is followed by eleven others from internationally respected specialists in democracy and religion. They address, challenge, and engage Abou El Fadl's work. The contributors include John Esposito, Muhammad Fadel, Noah Feldman, Nader Hashemi, Bernard Haykel, Muqtedar Khan, Saba Mahmood, David Novak, William Quandt, Kevin Reinhart, and Jeremy Waldron.

Graffiti in the Holy of Holies: Recent Attacks on the Sanctuary and Ellen White Takes Aim at the Heart of Adventism : Clifford Goldstein Responds


Clifford Goldstein - 2004
    He also labels Ellen White a false prophet. How can we respond? In Graffiti in the Holy of Holies, author and church apologist Clifford Goldstein examines the arguments against Ellen White and the pre-Advent judgment, and responds point by point. The result is a thoughtful and clear defense that goes beyond his earlier "1844 Made Simple" in revealing the Bible-based and gospel-uplifting truth about the sanctuary. Vandals are attempting to spoil your faith. The time to know the difference between the Word of God and the graffiti of man is now. This book will make that difference crystal clear.

What We Want Is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art


Ted Purves - 2004
    Featuring a detailed survey of over fifty artists' projects from fifteen countries, What We Want Is Free explores how these artists use their projects to connect participants to tangible goods and services that they might need, enjoy, and benefit from. Samples of these various projects include the creation of free commuter bus lines and medicinal plant gardens; the distribution of such services as free housework and computer programming; and the production of community media projects such as free commuter newspapers and democratic low-wattage radio stations.

Brown Gold: Milestones of African-American Children's Picture Books, 1845-2002


Michelle H. Martin - 2004
    At the turn of the nineteenth century, good children's books about black life were hard to find -- if, indeed, young black readers and their parents could even gain entry into the bookstores and libraries. But today, in the Golden Age of African-American children's picturebooks, one can find a wealth of titles ranging from Happy to be Nappy to Black is Brown is Tan. In this book, Michelle Martin explores how the genre has evolved from problematic early works such as Epaminondas that were rooted in minstrelsy and stereotype, through the civil rights movement, and onward to contemporary celebrations of blackness. She demonstrates the cultural importance of contemporary favorites through keen historical analysis -- scrutinizing the longevity and proliferation of the Coontown series and Ten Little Niggers books, for example -- that makes clear how few picturebooks existed in which black children could see themselves and their people positively represented even up until the 1960s. Martin also explores how children's authors and illustrators have addressed major issues in black life and history including racism, the civil rights movement, black feminism, major historical figures, religion, and slavery. Brown Gold adds new depth to the reader's understanding of African-American literature and culture, and illuminates how the round, dynamic characters in these children's novels, novellas, and picturebooks can put a face on the past, a face with which many contemporary readers can identify.

Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work


Janet Zandy - 2004
    Janet Zandy begins by examining the literal loss of lives to unsafe jobs and occupational hazards. She asks critical and timely questions about worker representation--who speaks for employees when the mills, mines, factories, and even white-collar cubicles shut down? She presents the voices of working-class writers and artists, and discusses their contribution to knowledge and culture.This innovative study reveals the flesh and bone beneath the abstractions of labor, class, and culture. It is an essential contribution to the emerging field of working-class studies, offering a hybrid model for bridging communities and non-academic workers to scholars and institutions of knowledge.

Performing Music in the Age of Recording


Robert Philip - 2004
    What is the relationship between performance and recording? How are modern audiences affected by the trends set in motion by the recording era? What is the impact of recordings on the lives of musicians? In this wide-ranging book, Robert Philip extends the scope of his earlier pioneering book, Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance 1900–1950. Philip here considers the interaction between music-making and recording throughout the entire twentieth century.The author compares the lives of musicians and audiences in the years before recordings with those of today. He examines such diverse and sometimes contentious topics as changing attitudes toward freedom of expression, the authority of recordings made by or approved by composers, the globalization of performing styles, and the rise of the period instrument movement. Philip concludes with a thought-provoking discussion of the future of classical music performance.

Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity


Gershon David Hundert - 2004
    The experience of eighteenth-century Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not fit the pattern of integration and universalization—in short, of westernization—that historians tend to place at the origins of Jewish modernity. Hundert puts this experience, that of the majority of the Jewish people, at the center of his history. He focuses on the relations of Jews with the state and their role in the economy, and on more "internal" developments such as the popularization of the Kabbalah and the rise of Hasidism. Thus he describes the elements of Jewish experience that became the basis for a "core Jewish identity"—an identity that accompanied the majority of Jews into modernity.

The Failures Of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream


Sheryll Cashin - 2004
    The landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education, sounded the death knell for legal segregation, but fifty years later, de facto segregation in America thrives. And Sheryll Cashin believes that it is getting worse.The Failures of Integration is a provocative look at how segregation by race and class is ruining American democracy. Only a small minority of the affluent are truly living the American Dream, complete with attractive, job-rich suburbs, reasonably low taxes, good public schools, and little violent crime. For the remaining majority of Americans, segregation comes with stratospheric costs. In a society that sets up "winner" and "loser" communities and schools defined by race and class, racial minorities in particular are locked out of the "winner" column. African-Americans bear the heaviest burden. But with the expensive price tag attached to "winner" communities, middle-income whites also struggle to afford homes in good neighborhoods with acceptable schools. What's worse is that we've come to accept our segregated society. Most whites have bought into the psychology of the bulwark: the idea that separating themselves from different races and classes is the only sure route to better opportunity. African-Americans, on the other hand, have become integration weary. Many escape to affluent all-black enclaves in hopes of thriving among their own, even as they attempt to insulate themselves from their less advantaged brothers and sisters. Sheryll Cashin shows why this separation is not working for most Americans. In a rapidly diversifying America, Cashin argues, we need a radical transformation-a jettisoning of the now ingrained assumption that separation is acceptable-in order to solve the riddle of inequality. Our public policy choices must be premised on an integrationist vision if we are to achieve our highest aspiration and pursue the dream that America says it embraces: full and equal opportunity for all.

Anguish of the Jews (Revised and Updated): Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism


Edward Flannery - 2004
    --David W. Tracy A major contribution to Jewish-Christian relations. --Marc Tanenbaum It will bring the Catholic community an entirely new development in their thinking about the people of the Jewish faith. --Robert F. Drinan It comes from the heart of an honest priest who is deeply moved by the poisonous horror of anti-Semitism, and who appeals to his people to remember that...it is a denial of Christian faith, a failure of Christian hope, and a malady of Christian love. --Abram Sachar A definitive work. --Benjamin Epstein This revised and updated edition of THE ANGUISH OF THE JEWS - a classic history of anti-Semitism written by a Roman Catholic priest and now with a foreword by Philip Cunningham is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1964. Hailed by Jews and Christians alike as a groundbreaking book that did much to expose the reality of historical anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world, it includes material covering the last two decades; it considers developments in the Middle East, and it explores the impact that Judaic studies have had on Christian thought. +

Learn Chinese with Me, Book 2


Fu A. Chen - 2004
    It includes new words and phrases in each lesson. Chinese characters are shown with colorful illustrations and pinyin. Book 2 In Simplified Chinese. Annotation copyright Tsai Fong Books, Inc. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: I & Eye


Bich Minh Nguyen - 2004
    KEY TOPICS: The sometimes blurry line between personal and journalistic nonfiction; emphasis on craft; focus on thematic organization as an approach. MARKET: Undergraduate Introductory and Advanced courses on essay writing and the art of the essay; Graduate-level courses on Creative Nonfiction writing.

Implementing Sustainable Development: From Global Policy to Local Action: From Global Policy to Local Action


Phillip J. Cooper - 2004
    However, note Cooper and Vargas (both of the U. of Vermont), there has also been an implementation gap. Saying that implementation is the art of the feasible, they present a feasibility framework for profes