Books about Tethered from Amazon.com

Clara Marsh is an undertaker who doesn’t believe in God. She spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their last baths and bidding them farewell with a bouquet from her own garden. Her carefully structured life shifts when she discovers a neglected little girl, Trecie, playing in the funeral parlor, desperate for a friend.

It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. Unclaimed by family, the community christened her Precious Doe. When Clara and Mike learn Trecie may be involved with the same people who killed Precious Doe, Clara must choose between the stead-fast existence of loneliness and the perils of binding one’s life to another..
Price: $11.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Tethered to the Earth contains human figures in two landscapes as well as the complex emotions evoked when one is far from home. After living and teaching in Northern Wisconsin for two school years and traveling through Europe for five weeks (the summer between), the poet's view of the world seemed a far bigger place. These poems are meant to address two types of isolation and awakening, an evocation of two personal places within oneself. With the stark and desolate beauty of Ashland, Wisconsin and the wandering style of European life, the imaginative nature of two distinct parts of the earth begin to transmit themselves..
Price: $16.81 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"How tethered are you?" That's what Sheldon Richman starts out asking in this indispensable book laying bare "the theory and practice of the welfare state."

Chances are Richman's answer will widen the eyes even of those who think they're familiar with the welfare state’s milestones, such as the New Deal. The author digs deeper, unearthing not just milestones but also the very foundation stones of the welfare state. And he shows how deeply welfare-state thinking has penetrated American society.

Richman unmasks the conceptual trickery inherent in the term "welfare," explains who benefits and who loses from it, and – exploring democracy's dark side -- reveals how wrong it is to claim that the electorate has deliberately voted the welfare state into place. Moreover, he exposes the fraud of recent welfare "reform."

As the author demonstrates, "welfare" isn't just for the poor. It never has been. Two of the foundation stones Richman examines are Bismarckian Germany's "social insurance," which went hand in hand with protection for industry, and post-Civil War America's vast system of veterans pensions, which came in handy for buying votes. And as for the "poor" themselves, readers will discover how hard it is to say, objectively, just who they are.

What distinguishes Richman's account of the welfare state is his own consistent adherence to a philosophy of reason and individual rights. He doesn't compromise -- and he sees clearly how others who would defend freedom have compromised, and fatally. The author doesn't confine himself to attacking welfarism; he also demonstrates the virtue and power of individualism, property, and competition. Richman shows that economic competition is nothing more or less than peaceful cooperation in a climate of freedom.

Thanks to Sheldon Richman, collectivists are going to sound like Flat Earthers the next time they talk about "atomistic individualism." Richman's ingenious and unforgettable riposte -- "molecular individualism" -- is only one example of how this exciting book untethers the mind..
Price: $7.37 [Notify me when price goes down.]