Books about Recipient from Amazon.com

During the course of his military career, Bud Day won every available combat medal, escaped death on no less than seven occasions, and spent 67 months as a POW in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, along with John McCain. Despite sustained torture, Day would not break. He became a hero to POWs everywhere--a man who fought without pause, not a prisoner of war, but a prisoner at war.



Upon his return, passed over for promotion to Brigadier General, Day retired. But years later, with his children grown and a lifetime of service to his country behind him, he would engage in another battle, this one against an opponent he never had expected: his own country. On his side would be the hundreds of thousands of veterans who had fought for America only to be betrayed. And what would happen next would make Bud Day an even greater legend..
Price: $13.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

More than a decade after presidential candidate Bill Clinton floated the idea of ending "welfare as we know it," the changes to the system have become so accepted and entrenched that it is difficult to remember the heated controversy surrounding the issue of reform. Jason DeParle, a social policy reporter for The New York Times, forcefully brings the subject to life in American Dream, a moving and informed examination of the challenges, complexities, successes, and failures involved in fixing our nation's ailing welfare system. Tracing the lives of three women and their children as legislative changes are pushed through Washington and the state of Wisconsin, DeParle puts an extraordinarily human face on a subject that is too often prone to ideological oversimplification. As DeParle adeptly shows, their story "of adversity variously overcome, compounded, or merely endured ... embodies the story of welfare writ large."

The three compelling women at the heart of DeParle's narrative are vastly different temperamentally, yet they share the abstract qualities of strength and endurance, as well as extended family ties. DeParle paints their portraits with respect and sensitivity, and he provides a marvelous family history that reveals how "the story of welfare" is painfully "tangled in the story of race." Our glimpse at these difficult lives and the forces that profoundly shape them inspire an equal measure of hope and disappointment, and a large measure of outrage. As these remarkably resilient women struggle to raise their families, corruption is exposed in the very offices charged with implementing the newly adopted reforms. DeParle accepts that removing nine million women and children from the welfare rolls represents enormous progress. However, he simultaneously recognizes that we are dismally failing to confront a consequence of welfare reform: a new class of working poor. --Silvana Tropea.
Price: $3.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Dorothy Roberts' passionate and well-documented book looks at a less-talked about side of the battle for reproductive rights: the history of the social and governmental control of African American women's bodies.

Roberts, a law professor at Rutgers University, asserts that African American women have been engaged from the start in an ongoing fight to gain control of their reproductive choice. First, in the early days of American slavery, from control by white "masters" who forced slaves to produce children to work for them, and now, from government "solutions" to African American child-bearing like the distribution of the long-term contraceptive Norplant in African American communities.

Roberts also takes the mainstream feminist movement to task for working mostly for the "negative right" of liberty, that is, the right of women to not have the government involved in their reproductive decision-making. To Roberts this debate, focused mainly on government non-interference, ignores issues especially important to African American women such as access to contraception or reproduction technologies. "Reproductive freedom is a matter of social justice," she says, stating further that it is social inequality, more than any legal interference, that severely limits African American women's ability to choose how and whether to have children. "We need a way of rethinking the meaning of liberty so that it protects all citizens equally," Roberts writes. "I propose that focusing on the connection between reproductive rights and racial equality is the place to start." --Maria Dolan.
Price: $7.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This compelling book destroys the derogatory images of single mothers that too often prevail in the media and in politics by creating a rich, moving, multidimensional picture of who these women really are. Ruth Sidel interviewed mothers from diverse races, ethnicities, religions, and social classes who became single through divorce, separation, widowhood, or who never married; none had planned to raise children on their own. Weaving together these women's voices with an accessible, cutting-edge sociological and political analysis of single motherhood today, Unsung Heroines introduces a resilient, resourceful, and courageous population of women committed to their families, holding fast to quintessential American values, and creating positive new lives for themselves and their children. What emerges from this penetrating study is a clear message about what all families--two-parent as well as single parent--must have to succeed: decent jobs at a living wage, comprehensive health care, and preschool and after-school care. In a final chapter, Sidel gives a broad political-economic analysis that provides historical background on the way American social policy has evolved and compares the situation in the U.S. to the social policies and ideologies of other countries..
Price: $11.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With the passage of the 1996 welfare reform, not only welfare, but poverty and inequality have disappeared from the political discourse. The decline in the welfare rolls has been hailed as a success. This book challenges that assumption. It argues that while many single mothers left welfare, they have joined the working poor, and fail to make a decent living. The book examines the persistent demonization of poor single-mother families; the impact of the low-wage market on perpetuating poverty and inequality; and the role of the welfare bureaucracy in defining deserving and undeserving poor. It argues that the emphasis on family values - marriage promotion, sex education and abstinence - is misguided and diverts attention from the economic hardships low-income families face. The book proposes an alternative approach to reducing poverty and inequality that centers on a children's allowance as basic income support coupled with jobs and universal child care..
Price: $16.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the mid-1980s, the popularity of Charles Murray's anti-welfare treatise Losing Ground signaled the rising influence of the right-wing critique of welfare. In Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty and Beyond, a respected array of social scientists buck the conservative trend established by Murray and his cohorts, exposing welfare reform as a sham and positing new strategies to end poverty.

Since the mid-1990s, when Bill Clinton betrayed his supporters on the left by signing welfare reform legislation, the United States has drastically restructured its national policies regarding basic state supports for the poor. Welfare reform legislation is up forreauthorization on the federal level and in 32 states in 2002, but evidence suggesting that welfare reform has created more problems thanit has solved is starting to mount. For example, studies marking the 5-year anniversary of welfare reform show that children forced off AFDC (Aid for Dependents and Children) are significantly less successful in school and more inclined toward violent and criminal behavior, even when their mothers have found employment.

The downside of welfare reform is documented in Lost Ground. And this anthology analyses welfare issues in the context of broad political shifts, including globalization, the end of the family wage, the sexual revolution, and the rise of black liberation, feminism, and multiculturalism. Contributors include Mimi Abramovitz, Willie Baptist, Mary Bricker-Jenkins, Linda Burnham, Linda Gordon, James Jennings, Gwendolyn Mink, Frances Fox Piven, Sanford Schram, Joe Soss and Lucie White.

Randy Albelda and Ann Withorn are professors at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. They have written several books and articles including Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty by Randy Albelda and Chris Tilly; and For Crying Out Loud: Women's Poverty in the United States, edited by Ann Withorn and DianeDujon.

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This collection of moving black-and-white photographs of recipients of the Medal of Honor shows not the glory of war, but the underlying spirit and humanity of true heroism Forty-eight portraits are combined with comments, observations, and statements from the recipients of America's highest military honor. This compilation of words and pictures of men who served in the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps is both humbling and poignant. Their actions and lives vary as much as the conflicts (World War II, Korea, and Vietnam) and include a conscientious objector who never wielded a weapon and a man known as the "Last Eagle," as he was the last World War II pilot to retire. Each recipient's full official citation is included in the appendix..
Price: $19.51 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The powerful case for a society of mutual respect

In Respect in a World of Inequality, distinguished sociologist Richard Sennett explores the need for respect—and the consequences of disrespect—in a highly competitive and interdependent society.

Opening with a memoir of growing up in Chicago's infamous Cabrini Green housing project, Richard Sennett looks at three factors that undermine mutual respect: unequal ability, adult dependency, and degrading forms of compassion. In contrast to current welfare "reforms," Sennett proposes a welfare system based on respect for those in need. He explores how self-worth can be nurtured in an unequal society (for example, through dedication to craft); how self-esteem must be balanced with feeling for others; and how mutual respect can forge bonds across the divide of inequality.

Where erasing inequality was once the goal of social radicals, Sennett seeks a more humane meritocracy: a society that, while accepting inequalities of talent, seeks to nurture the best in all its members and to connect them strongly to one another..
Price: $5.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Albert and Skolnik enliven the theoretical material that students are required to know. Their integration of legal documents into the text enables students to gain first-hand experience in reading the types of documents they will encounter in practice. This text helps students understand the social programs affecting professional practice with those who have been economically dislocated, the near-poor and poor situated on the fringe of the economy that find themselves dependent upon governmental programs to meet their basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, and/or medical care. It presents not only the key features of the major national programs supporting this group, but also the subjective experience of program recipients and the impact of program participation on their lives. Clients' voices are given prominence in order to gain insight into the meaning they assign to their participation and its consequences. Clients' stories provide the connection between the often segregated professional knowledge realms of practice and policy and underscore the legal context of professional practice through examination of illustrative legislation, regulation and judicial decisions..
Price: $42.33 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Kinghts Cross W/Diamond Recip.
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