Best of
Poverty

2006

Friends Forever


Lyn Andrews - 2006
    A must-read for fans of Kitty Neale and Ellie Deane.In 1928 Bernie O'Sullivan and Molly Keegan catch their first glimpse of the bustling city they're about to call home. Both seventeen, and best friends since childhood, the girls have left Ireland behind for an exciting new life in Liverpool.They are dismayed to discover that the relatives they are to stay with have barely two pennies to rub together; the promised grand house is a run-down building in one of Liverpool's worst slum areas. Desperate to escape, Bernie secures a position as a domestic servant, while Molly is taken on as a shop assistant.Soon they have settled and find themselves in love with local men. For both, though, love holds surprises and the danger of ruin in an unforgiving world...

Something about Hensley's


Patricia Polacco - 2006
    It's almost magical the way the manager, Old John, seems to know what the townsfolk need before they do! But then a new family moves to town. The youngest child, Molly, has asthma--but her mother doesn't have money to treat her, or for anything else. But leave it to Old John to find a way to use Hensley's to give the family exactly what it needs, even if it can't be boxed or bagged. A true--and truly moving--story about an unforgettable general store and about the extraordinary power one person's acts of kindness can have on another. About the Author: Patricia Polacco lives in Union City, Michigan.

From Union Square to Rome


Dorothy Day - 2006
    Much of what she wrote here in 1938 would be taken up in her book "Loaves and Fishes", written more than a decade later. This first recounting of her faith journey, however, has a freshness and immediacy that the later work does not share. Part of this is because she write largely in the "second person" -- that is, she addresses her book to her brother, making an account of her heart and her life to this younger sibling with whom she shared so many ideals but not the Christian faith. Of course, this is part of the genre. Dorothy Day published her reflections to her brother in book form, so I take this to mean that she wanted to direct her message it for many other brothers and sisters, unbelievers and believers. In telling her story, she raises the hot issues of social justice, human solidarity, faith in life, prayer and self-sufficiency, politics and ethos. "From Union Square to Rome" was written 70 years ago, and Dorothy Day died nearly three decades ago... but she comes alive in these pages and presses you, as reader, to take stock of your own beliefs and lifestyle. Thanks, Dorothy Day! I'm so glad that I found this book of yours!

Talking with Mother Earth / Hablando con Madre Tierra


Jorge Argueta - 2006
    He’s different from the other children, whose taunts wound him deeply, leaving him confused and afraid. But Tetl’s grandmother knows the ancient teachings of their Aztec ancestors, and how they viewed the earth as alive with sacred meaning. With her help, he learns to listen to the mountains, wind, corn, and stones. Tetl's journey from self-doubt to proud acceptance of his Nahuatl heritage is told in a series of powerful poems, beautifully expressed in both English and Spanish. Vivid illustrations celebrate nature’s redemptive powers, offering a perfect complement to the poignant story.

Saving Levi: Left to Die, Destined to Live


Lisa Misraje Bentley - 2006
    Soon after their arrival, a 6-week-old baby boy, with burns on over 70% of his body, was found in a field and brought to them. This is just the beginning of Levi's story. Saving Levi brings together the stories of believers and non-believers alike whom God used to save the life of this little boy and help him heal. Levi's story has already united people around the world through E-mail, prayer, and word of mouth. This is a book about the value of life and a loving God who uses whomever He pleases to accomplish His will.

Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility


Lant Pritchett - 2006
    Increasing wage gaps, different demographic futures, "everything but labor" globalization, and the continued employment growth in low skilled, labor intensive industries all contribute to the forces compelling labor to migrate across national borders. Pritchett analyzes the fifth irresistible force of "ghosts and zombies," or the rapid and massive shifts in desired populations of countries, and says that this aspect has been neglected in the discussion of global labor mobility. Let Their People Come provides six policy recommendations for unskilled immigration policy that seek to reconcile the irresistible force of migration with the immovable ideas in rich countries that keep this force in check. In clear, accessible prose, this volume explores ways to regulate migration flows so that they are a benefit to both the global North and global South.

Trolls and Truth: 14 Realities about Today's Church That We Don't Want to See


Jimmy Dorrell - 2006
    As they live out biblical mandates across cultural barriers and institutional baggage, they remind us that the gospel cannot be shaped by socially accepted values and remain "good news."

Spider-Man: Wizard Masterpiece Edition


Roger Stern - 2006
    When a burglar killed his beloved Uncle Ben, a grief-stricken Peter vowed to use his amazing abilities to protect his fellow man. He had learned an invaluable lesson: With great power, there must also come great responsibility!

From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America


Charles J. Ogletree Jr. - 2006
    This trend shows little evidence of diminishing, and follows a larger pattern of the violent criminalization of African American populations that has marked the country's history of punishment.In a bold attempt to tackle the looming question of how and why the connection between race and the death penalty has been so strong throughout American history, Ogletree and Sarat headline an interdisciplinary cast of experts in reflecting on this disturbing issue. Insightful original essays approach the topic from legal, historical, cultural, and social science perspectives to show the ways that the death penalty is racialized, the places in the death penalty process where race makes a difference, and the ways that meanings of race in the United States are constructed in and through our practices of capital punishment.From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State not only uncovers the ways that race influences capital punishment, but also attempts to situate the linkage between race and the death penalty in the history of this country, in particular the history of lynching. In its probing examination of how and why the connection between race and the death penalty has been so strong throughout American history, this book forces us to consider how the death penalty gives meaning to race as well as why the racialization of the death penalty is uniquely American.

Sub-Merge: Living Deep in a Shallow World: Service, Justice and Contemplation Among the World's Poor


John Hayes - 2006
    

TWO AMERICAS, TWO EDUCATIONS


Paul F. Cummins - 2006
    In fact, nearly everyone would also agree that our schools should be more than merely adequate. They should be superior. In Two Americas, Two Educations, Cummins will describe what superb, or even simply adequate, schools would look like, and second, how those schools might be funded. Cummins is not intending to lay down a final blueprint but to present the case for superb schools and explain how they can become a reality.

The Robert Bellah Reader


Robert N. Bellah - 2006
    Bellah is a truly visionary leader in the social study of religion. For more than four decades, he has examined the role of religion in modern and premodern societies, attempting to discern how religious meaning is formed and how it shapes ethical and political practices. The Robert Bellah Reader brings together twenty-eight of Bellah’s seminal essays. While the essays span a period of more than forty years, nearly half of them were written in the past decade, many in the past few years.The Reader is organized around four central concerns. It seeks to place modernity in theoretical and historical perspective, drawing from major figures in social science, historical and contemporary, from Aristotle and Rousseau through Durkheim and Weber to Habermas and Mary Douglas. It takes the United States to be in some respects the type-case of modernity and in others the most atypical of modern societies, analyzing its common faith in individual freedom and democratic self-government, and its persistent paradoxes of inequality, exclusion, and empire. The Reader is also concerned to test the axiomatic modern assumption that rational cognition and moral evaluation, fact and value, are absolutely divided, arguing instead that they overlap and interact much more than conventional wisdom in the university today usually admits. Finally, it criticizes modernity’s affirmation that faith and knowledge stand even more utterly at odds, arguing instead that their overlap and interaction, obvious in every premodern society, animate the modern world as well.Through such critical and constructive inquiry this Reader probes many of our deepest social and cultural quandaries, quandaries that put modernity itself, with all its immense achievements, at mortal risk. Through the practical self-understanding such inquiry spurs, Bellah shows how we may share responsibility for the world we have made and seek to heal it.

Understanding Poverty


Abhijit V. Banerjee - 2006
    Yet the lay public almost never gets to hear what leading professional economists have to say about it. This volume brings together twenty-eight essays by some of the world leaders in the field, who were invited to tell the lay reader about the most important things they have learnt from their research that relate to poverty. The essays cover a wide array of topics: the first essay is about how poverty gets measured. The next section is about the causes of poverty and its persistence, andthe ideas range from the impact of colonialism and globalization to the problems of excessive population growth, corruption and ethnic conflict. The next section is about policy: how should we fight poverty? The essays discuss how to get drug companies to produce more vaccines for the diseases ofthe poor, what we should and should not expect from micro-credit, what we should do about child labor, how to design welfare policies that work better and a host of other topics. The final section is about where the puzzles lie: what are the most important anomalies, the big gaps in the wayeconomists think about poverty? The essays talk about the puzzling reluctance of Kenyan farmers to fertilizers, the enduring power of social relationships in economic transactions in developing countries and the need to understand where aspirations come from, and much else. Every essay is writtenwith the aim of presenting the latest and the most sophisticated in economics without any recourse to jargon or technical language.

Moving Out, Moving Up: Families Beyond Shelter


Ralph da Costa Nunez - 2006
    Unlike most books about homelessness relaying stories of discouragement and despair, it highlights the achievements of those who broke the cycle of family homelessness.Experiences of six individuals.

Poverty in the Theology of John Calvin


Bonnie L. Pattison - 2006
    Poverty makes the kingdom visible to the eyes and therefore recognizable as divine. Poverty acts to reveal or disclose that which is spiritual, or that which is ""of God"" in the Christian faith. This does not mean that Calvin sees the condition of physical poverty as revelatory in and of itself. Rather, poverty and affliction function as agents of divine revelation. They are a condition or a chosen instrument God uses to disclose to humanity the nature of true spirituality, godliness, and poverty of spirit. How this is demonstrated in Calvin's thought depends upon the specific doctrine under examination. This study explores three particular areas in Calvin's theology where his theological understanding of spiritual poverty and physical poverty (or affliction) intersect--his Christology, his doctrine of the Christian life, and his ecclesiology. About the Contributor(s): Bonnie L. Pattison received her PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary and teaches theology, historical theology and ethics at Wheaton College. She has also taught at North Park University in Chicago and the Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary in West Africa.