Wade decision, most women determined to get abortions had to subject themselves to the power of illegal, unregulated abortionists...But a Chicago woman who happened to stumble across a secret organization code-named 'Jane' had an alternative. Laura Kaplan, who joined Jane in 1971, has pieced together the histories of the anonymous (here identified only by pseudonyms), average-sounding women who transformed themselves into outlaws."—Cleveland Plain Dealer"The Story of Jane is a piece of women's history in step with feminist theory demanding that women tell their own stories. It serves to remind people of an important and often overlooked moment in the women's rights movement."—Seattle Weekly"Laura Kaplan's The Story of Jane is the first book to chronicle this controversial sliver of history, and it is a fascinating, if partisan, close-up of the group."—Newsday"[Kaplan] draws on her personal recollections and interviews with Jane members and clients and the doctors who performed the abortions to provide a well-written, detailed history of this radical group."—Publisher's Weekly"Weaving together the voices and memories of her former co-workers, Kaplan recounts how the group initially focused on counseling women and helping them find reliable, reasonably priced doctors....Kaplan's account of this remarkable story recaptures the political idealism of the early '70s...23 years after Roe vs. Wade, the issues and memories raised by the books are close and all too relevant."—K Kaufmann, San Francisco Chronicle"Laura Kaplan's The Story of Jane is the first book to chronicle this controversial sliver of history, and it is a fascinating, if partisan, close-up of the group....The Story of Jane succeeds on the steam of Kaplan's gripping subject and her moving belief in the power of small-scale change."—Cynthia Leive, New York Newsday"During the four years before the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, the 100 members of Jane helped some 11,000 women end their pregnancies....There is more in this remarkable book that will further raise eyebrows....Kaplan's engrossing tales of the quiet courage of the women who risked their reputations and freedom to help others may remind many readers of other kinds of outlaws who have resisted tyranny throughout history."—Chicago Sun-Times

    Na'im Akbar addresses these questions:" Are African-Americans still slaves ?" "Why can't Black folks get together ?" "What is the psychological consequences for Blacks and Whites of picturing God as a Caucasian ?"Learn how to break the chains of your mental slavery with this new book by one of the world's outstanding experts on the African American mind .

    Wells was an African-American woman who achieved national and international fame as a journalist, public speaker, and community activist. This volume collects three pamphlets that constitute her major works during the anti-lynching movement: Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, A Red Record, and Mob Rule in New Orleans.

    Defying simplistic conservative and liberal arguments about why the black underclass persists, Dash puts a human face on their struggle to survive despite both disastrous personal choices and almost insurmountable circumstances.The book spans a half-century of hardship, from Rosa Lee Cunningham's bleak early life in the Jim Crow South to her death from AIDS at age fifty-nine. Rosa Lee gave birth to her first child at fourteen, was married at sixteen, and ultimately bore eight children whom she had no legitimate means of supporting. When her welfare checks proved insufficient to feed her family, she turned to prostitution and selling stolen clothes and drugs. Yet Rosa Lee maintained a flickering desire to do what was right. Two of her sons did escape the ghetto to enter mainstream life, and after Dash's series of articles ran in The Washington Post, she made public speeches, hoping to encourage other people to avoid her destructive choices.Rosa Lee is the worthy successor to such works as Jonathan Kozol's Death at an Early Age. It offers no easy answers, but is instead challenging, thought-provoking, and utterly unforgettable.

    With devastating clarity, Gilligan traces the role that shame plays in the etiology of murder and explains why our present penal system only exacerbates it. Brilliantly argued, harrowing in its portraits of the walking dead, Violence should be read by anyone concerned with this national epidemic and its widespread consequences.

    Granted unprecedented access to the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, including the judges, the probation officers, and the children themselves, This book provides evidence of the system's inability to slow juvenile crime or to make even a reasonable stab at rehabilitating troubled young offenders. Humes draws a portrait of a judicial system in disarray.

    After three decades of increasingly punitive policies, illicit drugs are more easily available, drug potencies are greater, drug killings are more common, and drug barons are richer than ever. The War on Drugs costs Washington more than the Commerce, Interior, and State departments combined - and it's the one budget item whose growth is never questioned. A strangled court system, exploding prisons, and wasted lives push the cost beyond measure. What began as a flourish of campaign rhetoric in 1968 has grown into a monster. And while nobody claims that the War on Drugs is a success, nobody suggests an alternative. Because to do so, as Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders learned, is political suicide. Dan Baum interviewed more than 175 people - from John Ehrlichman to Janet Reno - to tell the story of how Drug War fever has been escalated; who has benefited along the way; and how the mounting price in dollars, lives, and liberties has been willfully ignored. Smoke and Mirrors takes you right into the offices where each new stage was planned and executed, then takes you to the streets where policies have produced bloody warfare. This is a tale of the nation run amok - in a way the American people are not yet ready to confront.

    In 16 indelible portraits, Urrea illuminates the horrors and the simple joys of people trapped between the two worlds of Mexico and the United States--and ignored by both. The result is a startling and memorable work of first-person reportage.

    Wade, it's crucial to look back to the time when abortion was illegal. Leslie J. Reagan traces the practice and policing of abortion, which although illegal was nonetheless widely available, but always with threats for both doctor and patient. In a time when many young women don't even know that there was a period when abortion was a crime, this work offers chilling and vital lessons of importance to everyone. The linking of the words "abortion" and "crime" emphasizes the difficult and painful history that is the focus of Reagan's important book. Her study is the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with Roe v. Wade in 1973. Although illegal, millions of abortions were provided during these years to women of every class, race, and marital status. The experiences and perspectives of these women, as well as their physicians and midwives, are movingly portrayed here. Reagan traces the practice and policing of abortion. While abortions have been typically portrayed as grim "back alley" operations, she finds that abortion providers often practiced openly and safely. Moreover, numerous physicians performed abortions, despite prohibitions by the state and the American Medical Association. Women often found cooperative practitioners, but prosecution, public humiliation, loss of privacy, and inferior medical care were a constant threat. Reagan's analysis of previously untapped sources, including inquest records and trial transcripts, shows the fragility of patient rights and raises provocative questions about the relationship between medicine and law. With the right to abortion again under attack in the United States, this book offers vital lessons for every American concerned with health care, civil liberties, and personal and sexual freedom.

    Her story is followed by seven commentaries by experts in the field. They discuss the causes and process of spousal abuse, reasons why battered women stay, and the dynamic consequences of domestic violence.

    Despite government efforts to isolate and eliminate its use, it is more popular now than ever. Why Marijuana Should Be Legal analyzes the effects of marijuana and marijuana laws on society. The book addresses the drug's industrial and medical applications, preserving our Constitutional rights, economic costs, health effects, and sociological aspects. New and updated information includes how state officials are acting against the legalization of marijuana and how U.S. marijuana laws are based on inaccurate and outdated information. In discussing such issues and many more, the book presents clear, documented evidence for all of its conclusions. Also included is an annotated list of organizations that lobby for change of marijuana laws. "Rosenthal and Kubby offer crisp, well-reasoned arguments for legalizing marijuana."—Mike Tribby, Booklist "[A]n important contribution to the current national dialog on moves toward the decriminalization of this controversial drug."—The Midwest Book Review

    His music had been a spark firing 60s political idealism. His death signaled the end of an era. There But for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs is both an in-depth biography & a significant musical history, focusing on the importance of Ochs' topical songs addressing the civil rights, anti-war & labor movements. With the full cooperation of his family, & with unprecedented access to his diaries & notebooks, biographer Michael Schumacher tells the story of this gifted artist--from his early years as a musical prodigy & aspiring journalist in Ohio, where he earned his 1st guitar after betting on a Presidential election, to his initial performances in Greenwich Village's cafes & folk clubs; from his headline-making appearances at Carnegie Hall to his ambitious consciousness-raising political rallies. Rich in anecdotal detail, this biography recounts his travels round the globe, including his involuntary prison tour of S. America, as well as his associations with some of the most notable figures of his generation, including Bob Dylan, Robert F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Joan Baez & John Lennon. The story of Phil Ochs is ultimately the chronicle not only of a man but of the singular times in which he lived.

    In 1986, when he placed ads in Chinese newspapers calling for people's experiences, he received over 4000 responses. Those he has selected are disturbing, utterly compelling, seamlessly told and, together, constitute a many-layered and intimate picture. The interviews, which read like monologues, are prefaced by the person's age and occupation in 1966. One man, who was a 16-year-old student at the time, enjoyed destroying churches with the Red Guard, but when a classmate and an elderly man were beaten, he became a "non-participant." "I found that if you want to be a non-participant, the best thing to do is go fishing." A middle-aged housewife was not so lucky. When her husband was falsely charged with counterrevolutionary activity, they were both sentenced to No. 63, a prison camp where inmates were routinely tortured to death. She describes not just the cruelties she miraculously survived but the incidentals like the opera record, The Red Lantern, that the guards played to mask screams. Another woman, a gifted young dancer in 1966, was brainwashed into believing that her father was a "rightist." He died before she recognized the lie, and she now lives with terrible guilt. Feng includes four appendices: a chronology; key figures; an interview with the author; and several dozen short interviews to sample the widely varying attitudes towards the Cultural Revolution of those born after 1976. "What I fear most," says Feng, "is that later generations will adopt a sensationalist attitude towards the suffering of an earlier one." (From Publishers Weekly)

    Rosemarie Garland Thomson examines disabled figures in sentimental novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, and the popular cultural ritual of the freak show.

    But changing their behavior may be in our power. In this provocative, visionary book, Carol Bly examines some of this century's most far-ranging concepts about how to nurture ethical human beings and presents them through the lens of excellent contemporary literature. Changing the Bully Who Rules the World is a book of hopeful, practical ideas that can hasten ethical change both in our thinking and in our behavior. Through an anthology of exceptional literature, Bly's book asks the reader to contemplate anew the voices she presents - including works by Charles Baxter, Donald Hall, Jim Harrison, Mark Helprin, Denise Levertov, Thomas McGrath, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Oliver, Katha Pollitt, Alice Walker, Tobias Wolff, and many others - and to consider them in terms of the ideas of important thinkers in human behavior and our own experiences.

    Once Carl Upchurch was an elementary school dropout fighting for survival on the streets of South Philadelphia, a gang member wedded to a life of violence, a bank robber facing a future in federal penitentiaries.  Now he is a respected community organizer and one of the most compelling and visionary leaders of the civil rights movement.  Catapulted into the national spotlight following his organization of a summit that brought together the country's most notorious gangs.  Carl Upchurch has found himself in direct conflict with other African American civil right leaders.  This is his scathing critique of t he established civil rights movement and his bold manifesto for solving the critical problems facing today's urban American.  And this is his own unforgettable story-reality of urban crime gang warfare, and racial injustice from one who knows firsthand what it's like to be Convicted in the Womb

    Portraits by acclaimed photographer Mary Ellen Mark join an urgent introduction by Andrew Cuomo, Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, H.U.D. and founder of H.E.L.P. (Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged). Noted child psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dr. Robert Coles offers a thoughtful preface about the painful effects of homelessness on a child's soul. In the tradition of classic works of advocacy like Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, this book speaks to our national moral conscience and offers an optimistic message that both personal and social change is possible. introduction by Andrew Cuomo ; preface by Robert Coles ; interviews reported by Victoria Kohn.

    Drained of cash and spirit, Wood could not hold out much longer against a devouring giant, the Gannett Company. As editor and publisher of the nationally distinguished weekly Santa Fe Reporter, McCord had successfully fended off Gannett's "Operation Demolition" when it moved into town. Now Wood was seeking the help of a survivor.Startling case histories of the dubious tactics practiced by Gannett, unsparing insights into the newspaper industry, and harsh conclusions all come together in the dramatic story of these two men's efforts to save the small Green Bay daily from being obliterated at the hands of the nation's largest newspaper chain. Their success is a metaphor for one of the oldest triumphs of the world: that of David over Goliath."McCord has done something marvelous with this. He's taken a deeply disturbing nationwide trend and put it on a small midwestern stage with real characters. The Chain Gang's message needs to be heard by as many Americans as read newspapers. Already Gannett's monopoly tactics have impoverished communities across the country. McCord is one man fighting back, coolly, rationally, creatively, and stubbornly. Let's join him."—Michael Shnayerson, Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair"More graphically than almost any other available record of the era, the Gannett piracy is what has happened to this country, tolled where the price is truly paid, in the lives of communities and people."—Roger Morris, winner of the Investigative Reporters and Editors' National Award for Distinguished Investigative Journalism"Richard McCord's The Chain Gang takes the losing battle for the soul of American newspapers from the euphoric accounts on financial pages to show what corporate news chains can mean in human terms to the people and the vitality of the victimized cities and towns. His is a unique account of the power and depredations of the Gannett Chain under its glib empire builder, Allen Neuharth. It goes behind the facade of slick public relations and financial killings for investors to show what happens when a ruthless and ambitious wheeler-dealer gets control of our news."—Ben H. Bagdikian, media critic and Pulitzer Prize winner

    Using a lively question-and-answer format, this book fills that void, bringing to life the tremendous impact African Americans have had on this country's history.