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Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
The New York Times bestselling investigation into white-collar unemployment from “our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism”—The New York Times Book ReviewAmericans’ working lives are growing more precarious every day. Corporations slash employees by the thousands, and the benefits and pensions once guaranteed by “middle-class” jobs are a thing of the past. In Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich goes back undercover to explore another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with the plausible résumé of a professional “in transition,” she attempts to land a “middle-class” job. She submits to career coaching, personality testing, and EST-like boot camps, and attends job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and—again and again—rejected. Bait and Switch highlights the people who have done everything right—gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive résumés—yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster. There are few social supports for these newly disposable workers, Ehrenreich discovers, and little security even for those who have jobs. Worst of all, there is no honest reckoning with the inevitable consequences of the harsh new economy; rather, the jobless are persuaded that they have only themselves to blame. Alternately hilarious and tragic, Bait and Switch, like the classic Nickel and Dimed, is a searing exposé of the cruel new reality in which we all now live. .
Price: $0.04
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Out of Exile: Narratives from the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan (Voice of Witness)
Millions of people have fled from conflicts and persecution in all parts of this Northeast African country, and many thousands more have been enslaved as human spoils of war. In this book, refugees and abductees recount their escapes from the wars in Darfur and South Sudan, from political and religious persecution, and from abduction by militias. In their own words, they recount life before their displacement and the reasons for their flight. They describe life in the major stations on the "refugee railroads:" in the desert camps of Khartoum, the underground communities of Cairo, the humanitarian metropolis of Kakuma refugee camp, and the still-growing internally displaced persons camps in Darfur. .
Price: $15.45
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The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences
Layoffs have become a fact of life in today’s economy; initiated in the mid 1970s, they are now widely expected, and even accepted It doesn’t have to be that way. In The Disposable American, award-winning reporter Louis Uchitelle offers an eye-opening account of layoffs in America–how they started, their questionable necessity, and their devastating psychological impact on individuals at all income levels. Through portraits of both executives and workers at companies such as Stanley Works, United Airlines, and Citigroup, Uchitelle shows how layoffs are in fact counterproductive, rarely promoting efficiency or profitability in the long term. Recognizing that a global competitive economy makes tightening necessary, Uchitelle offers specific recommendations for government policies that would encourage companies to avoid layoffs and help create jobs, benefiting workers, corporations, and the nation as a whole..
Price: $8.19
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I Can't Forget: A Journey Through Nazi Germany and WWII
WWII was the bloodiest and most documented war in all history Yet, with the closing of the 20th century few remaining archives are still opened by witnesses whose voices have not yet been heard. This autobiography is the voice of a German girl of the Nazi period, and growing into adolescence, she describes a 400-mile trek by horse-wagon and on foot to escape the terror of the advancing Soviets. Her narrative offers glimpses of a courageous young girl and takes the reader through the awfulness of war and post-war conditions of homelessness, famine, refugee camps, devastated bombed cities, and the enormous suffering by millions of displaced Germans. The author interweaves her memoir with touching human experiences, moments of painful humor - and a surprise happy ending. The book reveals historic perspectives of WWII not commonly found in school curricula, nor shown in Hollywood docudramas..
Price: $14.99
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Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment
A Discover Magazine Top Science Book of the Year
A Northern California Book Award Finalist There are more than 45,000 of them in the world. They have altered the speed of the planet's rotation, the tilt of its axis, and the shape of its gravitational field. They influence landscapes and societies They are dams, and in Deep Water, Jacques Leslie offers an incisive, searching, and beautifully written account of the emerging crisis over dams and the world's water. Reporting in the tradition of John McPhee and Peter Matthiessen, Leslie examines the crisis through the lives of three people: Medha Patkar, the world's foremost anti-dam activist; Thayer Scudder, an American anthropologist; and Don Blackmore, an Australian water manager. In each of these engrossing portraits, Leslie shows how dams seduce national leaders with seeming bounties of water and power but end up producing blights on the citizenry and landscape. Deep Water is an eloquent and important book about the water crisis and a startling look at the fate of our planet. .
Price: $1.50
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Dps: Europe's Displaced Persons, 1945-1951
"Wyman's book is the only one that comprehensively, and sensitively, depicts the plight of the postwar refugees in Western Europe."--M. Mark Stolarik, University of Ottawa "This is a fascinating and very moving book."--International Migration Review "Wyman has written a highly readable account of the movement of diverse ethnic and cultural groups of Europe's displaced persons, 1945-1951. An analysis of the social, economic, and political circumstances within which relocation, resettlement, and repatriation of millions of people occurred, this study is equally a study in diplomacy, in international relations, and in social history. . . . A vivid and compassionate recreation of the events and circumstances within which displaced persons found themselves, of the strategies and means by which people survived or did not, and an account of the major powers in response to an unprecedented human crisis mark this as an important book."--Choice "Wyman interviewed some eighty DPs as well as employees of various agencies who served them; he cites a broad range of published primary sources, secondary sources, and some archival material. . . . This book presents a useful overview and should stimulate further research."--Journal of American Ethnic History.
Price: $13.94
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Children and the Dark Side of Human Experience: Confronting Global Realities and Rethinking Child Development
Their haunting images appear on millions of television screens and in newspapers worldwide: Children huddled in refugee camps and exposed to violence in war zones. Children burdened by the emotional and physical scars of violent homes and communities. Children exploited by crass commercialism around the world and around the corner. Too many children are confronting life-threatening risks and experiencing trauma. Synthesizing insights from psychology and philosophy with his own wide-ranging, first-hand experiences around the world, Dr. James Garbarino takes readers on a personalized journey into the dark side of human experience as it is lived by children. In these highly readable pages, Dr. Garbarino intertwines a discussion of children’s material and spiritual needs with a detailed examination of the clinical knowledge and experiential wisdom required to understand and meet complex developmental needs. Fusing anecdotal observations, empirical evidence, and an ecological perspective, he reveals a path to ensuring the fundamental human rights of all children: the right to safety, to equality, to economic parity, and to a meaningful life. Dr. Garbarino’s challenge to his readers: If we are to succeed in making a lasting, positive change in the lives of children, we must be willing to rethink the concepts of development, trauma, and resilience. Children and the Dark Side of Human Experience is must-reading for all mental health professionals, educators, researchers, social workers, child advocates, and policymakers – in fact, for anyone who takes an interest in the well-being and future of the world’s children. .
Price: $24.05
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The Displaced of Capital (Phoenix Poets Series)
Winner of the 2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.
The long-awaited follow-up to The Key to the City—a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1986—Anne Winters's The Displaced of Capital emanates a quiet and authoritative passion for social justice, embodying the voice of a subtle, sophisticated conscience.
The "displaced" in the book's title refers to the poor, the homeless, and the disenfranchised who populate New York, the city that serves at once as gritty backdrop, city of dreams, and urban nightmare. Winters also addresses the culturally, ethnically, and emotionally excluded and, in these politically sensitive poems, writes without sentimentality of a cityscape of tenements and immigrants, offering her poetry as a testament to the lives of have-nots. In the central poem, Winters witnesses the relationship between two women of disparate social classes whose friendship represents the poet's political convictions. With poems both powerful and musical, The Displaced of Capital marks Anne Winters's triumphant return and assures her standing as an essential New York poet.
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Price: $11.63
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A Scholar's Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe
For more than fifty years, Geoffrey Hartman has been a pivotal figure in the humanities. In his first book, in 1954, he helped establish the study of Romanticism as key to the problems of modernity. Later, his writings were crucial to the explosive developments in literary theory in the late seventies, and he was a pioneer in Jewish studies, trauma studies, and studies of the Holocaust. At Yale, he was a founder of its Judaic Studies program, as well as of the first major video archive for Holocaust testimonies. Generations of students have benefited from Hartman's generosity, his penetrating and incisive questioning, the wizardry of his close reading, and his sense that the work of a literary scholar, no less than that of an artist, is a creative act. All these qualities shine forth in this intellectual memoir, which will stand as his autobiography. Hartman describes his early education, uncanny sense of vocation, and development as a literary scholar and cultural critic. He looks back at how his career was influenced by his experience, at the age of nine, of being a refugee from Nazi Germany in the Kindertransport. He spent the next six years at school in England, where he developed his love of English literature and the English countryside, before leaving to join his mother in America. Hartman treats us to a "biobibliography" of his engagements with the major trends in literary criticism. He covers the exciting period at Yale handled so controversially by the media and gives us vivid portraits, in particular, of Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, and Jacques Derrida. All this is set in the context of his gradual self-awareness of what scholarship implies and how his personal displacements strengthened his calling to mediate between European and American literary cultures. Anyone looking for a rich, intelligible account of the last half-century of combative literary studies will want to read Geoffrey Hartman's unapologetic scholar's tale..
Price: $16.25
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