“Will American’s growing diversity undermine democracy, or is it instead a cornerstone of democracy? The Great Diversity Debate is essential reading for anyone who has thought about this question. Koppelman gives us a fascinating, detailed, and evenhanded account of the long historical roots of contemporary controversies surrounding flashpoint issues like affirmative action, multicultural education, and globalization. This well-researched and optimistic book will make ...

Wrestling with the Angel addresses the human struggle to cope with death, dying, grief, and bereavement. The book includes essays, a one-act play, a short story, and poetry, including shape poems, rhyming, structured verse, and free verse. In the one-act play, an angel of death comes for a man who has lived an unexamined life and wants to explain why he is not prepared to leave. The short story offers a humorous look at a man who resists aging by continuing to view himself as the young man...

Ben Blue is born prematurely on a kitchen table in Chicago in 1956. As the tiny Ho-Chunk Indian takes his first breath, he has no idea of the challenges that await him in life. Ben grows up amid poverty in his grandparents Wisconsin home where he learns how to fight, face bullies, and play football. As he is shuttled between his alcoholic mothers home and his grandparents, Ben must cling to hope that he can one day overcome the despair that has haunted the American Indians for generations....

Social movements have an elusive power but one that is altogether real. From the French and American revolutions to the post-Soviet, ethnic and terrorist movements of today, contentious politics exercises a fleeting but powerful influence on politics, society and international relations. This study surveys the modern history of the modern social movements in the West and their diffusion to the global South through war, colonialism and diffusion, and it puts forward a theory to explain its ...

All over the world democratic reforms have brought power to the people-but under conditions where the people have little opportunity to think about the power that they exercise. Do we want a democracy inspired by Madison or by Madison Avenue? A democracy animated by deliberation or by manipulation? This book examines each of the principal democratic theories and makes the case for a democracy in which the people offer informed judgments about politics or policy. It then goes on toshow how ...

Seven years ago, Christian Wiman, a well-known poet and the editor of Poetry magazine, wrote a now-famous essay about having faith in the face of death. My Bright Abyss, composed in the difficult years since and completed in the wake of a bone marrow transplant, is a moving meditation on what a viable contemporary faith—responsive not only to modern thought and science but also to religious tradition—might look like.Joyful, sorrowful, and beautifully written, ...

“I remember Sarah asking me, when I’d just begun therapy with her, what I looked for in a man. After a few moments of silent, tense deliberation I had it. ‘Hair,’ I blurted. ‘He has to have hair.’”Meredith Baxter is a beloved and iconic television actress, most well-known for her enormously popular role as hippie mom, Elyse Keaton, on Family Ties. Her warmth, humor, and brilliant smile made her one of the most popular women on television, with millions of ...

A powerful new argument for reviving the ideal of racial integrationMore than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial A...

In his bestselling The Soul's Code, James Hillman restored passion and meaning to the concept of identity, arguing that each of us is born with an innate character, the "daimon" or "spirit" that calls us to what we are meant to be. Now, in The Force of Character, Hillman brings the idea of character full circle, offering a revolutionary new vision of life's most feared and misunderstood chapter: old age."Aging is no accident," Hillman writes. "It is necess...

The New York Times–bestselling memoir from one of daytime television's most beloved actresses.Jeanne Cooper, the Emmy Award–winning American actress best known for her portrayal of Katherine Chancellor on the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless, recounts the steps and missteps of her six-decade career in Not Young, Still Restless. Exploring a career that began with the birth of a phenomenon called television, Cooper's life story ...

An assessment of the relationship between race and poverty in the United States, and potential solutions for the issue.Renowned American sociologist William Julius Wilson takes a look at the social transformation of inner-city ghettos, offering a sharp evaluation of the convergence of race and poverty. Rejecting both conservative and liberal interpretations of life in the inner city, Wilson offers essential information and several solutions to policymakers. The ...

A fresh, realistic approach to altering one's destiny and accepting the responsibility that grows with freedom.No meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddahood of each of us has already been obtained. We only need to recognize it.“The most important things that each man must learn no one can teach him. Once he accepts this disappointment, he will be able to stop depending on the therapist, the guru who turns out to be just another stru...