Social Sciences Books

Professor Herlinger has once again tackled the single greatest problem in the United States: the antiquated, patronizing, and profit-driven system of health care. Almost everyone who has the authority to do something about our system seems to be too closely tied to industry to make any significant change. This book lays it out simply and directly: we need to return to a consumer-oriented system

This book was absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend it! Dr. Herzlinger does a remarkable job of explaining the complex (and inefficient) healthcare system that we currently have and clearly outlining the steps that need to be taken to fix it. Her ideas are simple, yet complex because they will revolutionize healthcare and take great steps towards the better care and coverage we all deserve.

Consumer-driven healthcare means that we shop for our healthcare services just like we shop for a car, furniture, a handyman or a plumber. We try to get the best value for the dollar. We leave it up to the entrepreneurs to provide us with the best for the least. Competition brings down the cost of most everything, and healthcare costs are no exception. Regina Herzlinger makes an excellent argument for this in her book in a most passionate manner. It is quite obvious by the tone of her book that she wants to get her message across.

I am a licensed nursing home administrator, who owned and operated a skilled nursing home from 1986 to 2001, with as many as 60 employees, and like most employers, I provided healthcare coverage for my employees. As an entrepreneur I never worked so hard in my life! Before purchasing the nursing home and becoming an entrepreneur, I had worked 18 years for the State, at the University of Washington. Although during those 18 years I felt I was really working hard from 8 am to 5 pm, I rarely took any work home with me. Not so when I was operating my own business. It was 24/7! This is not unusual for entrepreneurs. This is the way it works, and this is the reason consumer-driven healthcare will work. Doctors, nurses, and all healthcare providers will all compete for the same consumer dollar. And Dr. Herzlinger explains succincly and explicitly how this can be done. Moreover, individuals who cannot afford healthcare will be empowered with tax monies to shop for their own services.

Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, set up a program similar to what Dr. Herzlinger proposes. and, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, from what I've read supports a radically different healthcare model from what is in place today. If we could get the three of them together, perhaps the $2 trillion healthcare problem would be solved! What an idea!

Let the entrepreneurs (who like to work hard. I know. I was one of them.) keep costs down by competing with one another hard and strong. This will bring about more innovation, research and invention than ever before. America can and should be the leader in providing the best affordable healthcare in the world. Spending more on healthcare doesn't always translate into making it better--at least not so far.

Dr. Herzlinger identifies brilliantly who killed healthcare, how they did it, and why they did it. Her book makes for fascinating reading. And she names names. Her book covers much of the history of healthcare in America. But, most importantly, she explains exactly what she thinks can and should be done and the difficulty that most assuredly will be encountered in "turning this big ship around." It's up to us to make it happen. She can't do it alone.

Virginia Frost DeBord

Jack Morgan was a great guy and when he died, a lot of people mourned him. He could have lived another 20 years, but he died because of an inept, malfunctioning, costly healthcare system. Jack thought this system was protecting him, but it killed him.

The hospitals, employers, managed care insurers, the Congress and executive branch, and health policy academics, all conspired, according to Dr. Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School Professor and accomplished author, to kill Jack and hundreds of thousands others, and to make enormous profits in the process.

Her solution? Consumer-driven healthcare, more or less following the Swiss model. It would enable innovators who have great ideas about how to get more value for the money to enter the space and allow providers compete for Jack's business. It would encourage multiple revolutionary innovations in the supply of health care and result in significantly better and less expensive service.

A truly innovative approach for radical improvement that can be accomplished incrementally and tremendously benefit all of us. Read it and think about wonderful possibilities!

Yuval Lirov, Practicing Profitability - Billing Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinics and Chiropractic Offices: Collections, Audit Risk, SOAP Notes, Scheduling, Care Plans, and Coding

I've been thinking about publishing a book on health intelligence, and borrowed this from a colleague.

My contribution will be the image I created while thinking about what the book should look like--the inner square was co-created with another person.

This book can be summarized with three words: *corruption* killed health; *transparency* can heal us; and only we, the *patients* (or victims) can come together to demand resolution.

In the comment, where Amazon does allow URLs, I am pointing to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report online, which documents 50% of all health costs as waste.

The author ends with very specific recommendations that are excellent as far as they go, but that ignore the 80% of solutions that are outside the existing hospital-pharmaceutical complex. The Japanese have started weighing and measuring their population--a population's health and vitality is the single greatest contributor to national power and prosperity, ergo, we need a "360" approach to national health, and I try to depict that in the image above.

See also:
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink
Fast Food Nation
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, and Their Effects on National Security and Development
Diet for a Small Planet (20th Anniversary Edition)
Human Scale
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Great book by Michael Shermer and a foreward by Stephen Jay Could.
I love the section on History and Pseudohistory-Holocaust- Debunking the deniers
Great book to retool our "Skepticism Radar".
Question....everything!

I got this book (an autographed copy, no less) after a debate between the author and a Christian apologist. The debate was very polite (possibly too polite; I think they were worried about how the students watching would behave if either side decisively won) and I don't think any minds were changed. Mr. Shermer spent most of his argument explaining why Theists believe what they believe, and why atheists don't. I remember wondering why he didn't simply argue against the beliefs themselves (many of which are beliefs about the world that can be proven one way or the other, such as whether God answers prayers like the Bible says he does). After reading this book, I understand it! Whether the beliefs are true is not the main deciding factor for most people; this book does an excellent job of explaining the way people's minds justify various beliefs.

Well written easy to understand book about the psychology of how people (even smart people) can fall into common logical fallacies and come to wrong conclusions if they aren't careful.

Must read.

debunkers are losers

whats the difference between debunkers and Christian fundamentalist..there isn't one there!

there both cults!

there is an esoteric side to life that the scientist don't know much about..I have had experience with ESP,OBE and helped make 2 documentary's on UFO phenomena.The reason people believe in strange things is because TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION!

I have no time for sceptic debunkers

OBTW it's possible to get 3 pairs dice correct in a row! Because I have done it (without conscious effort) "small inner voice"..it comes to when NOT thinking about it.

all I can say to debunkers..is get real..it's DIRECT EXPERIENCE!..positive people know the truth!

I feel sorry for debunkers..

Because they are pleasure addicts who have no evidence that the Bible is bad and in hypocrisy, attack it.

Just look at the stupid title. So whatever is "weird" and "odd" must be wrong huh? That's a childish school bully's insult: look at that guy over there, he's a weird because he doesn't dress, talk like us or agree with whatever we think is cool, so he must be inferior and let's keep insulting him.

The authors reject this over 1900 years old common sense advice:

"Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment." - Jesus

"There is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof leads to death." - Proverbs

They reject it, hence why their book, even the title, is stupid.

What's weird is believing that unimaginably complex amount of ordered life-sustaining and replicating information, a super beautiful universe with life-friendly areas; living replicating, emotional, multi-sensory, biological robots which enjoy singing, dancing, learning, and doing good and evil were created by an exploding bomb from dozens of billions of years ago with no explanation as to why it exploded which no one saw explode in the first place, and which the evidence shows did not ever happen.

Nor is there any evidence to explain why many living kinds of animals that are supposed to evolve over time (according to evolutionists) have not evolved after millions of years, but only lost some features such as the ability to defend against a certain kind of disease or digest some sort of food (like how non-animal humans have been losing the ability to digest milk or bread well). Nor is there evidence to explain why there are very high-tech ancient man-made tools in millions of years old strata when evolutionists claim man wasn't evolved enough at that time to make them or how an exploding MATERIAL bomb can create SPIRITUAL things like GOODNESS, EVIL, INFORMATION, and THOUGHTS. To believe the impossible over the evident and probable is what is "weird".

I'm not a very avid reader, but this one is pretty fun to read, and it's pretty basic(definitely not difficult reading!).

I would recommend it! It's pretty nice to get a foundation on some fairly important history. It's relative to other important facts in history or in life.

I have the 1988 edition so I can't vouch for this edition.
But I have to say if it is anything like this one then by all means grab it. A very readable style with plenty of humours illustrations that make this an unputdownable book. Don't let the cartoons fool you though, you will learn alot.

'Looking At Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter' by Donald Palmer lives up to the promise in its title; It is a very brief overview on the history of philosophy, covering most major philosophers through history, starting with the Greek philosophers, and ending with the modern philosophies.

It is an extremely light read. I found myself reading far ahead of the assigned chapters, simply because I was enjoying myself. The illustrations are humorous, though sometimes silly, especially for a text book.

The light reading can also be problematic. I found myself referring to other resources for a full understanding, because the author did not cover (I felt) enough ground on most subjects, leaving me without only a surface understanding of the concepts.

This book would be better suited to a high school class, rather than a serious, college course.

Overall, the text was refreshingly enjoyable, though oftentimes fell short.

This book got me to look at philosophy more... It's a great book if you just need a reference, without a lot of analysis by critics, or the actual philosophers themselves, which can get mind-numbing at times. It's great to get, if just for the cartoons (you end up having to read the text to make sense out of most of the cartoons). But no, I don't know if I can explain the naked-male-prostitute-riding-on-a-bicyle cartoon, which is actually in here (and not a figment of my imagination). But don't let that keep you from buying...

I bought this book for my Philosophy 101 class. I tried to sell it back but the bookstore wouldn't let me. Although I hated the idea that I wouldn't be getting my 30 bucks back, little did I know that this book would serve as an important tool for my Literary/Criticism class (which I am currently taking). It definitely clarifies complicated theories with a touch of humor added to the descriptions. There are also sketches in the book that are also humorous, yet provide the reader with a mental image on the topic at hand.

Substance: If you type in the chapter titles from the book into youtube, you'll find many lectures which more or less constitute the content of this book.

Material: the cover is its own dustjacket, it folds unto itself to provide pseudo cover flaps, the pages are unevenly cut in the "custom-bound" look that makes the page ends opposite the spine resemble a Richter Scale reading.

Content and Dimensions: At 128 pgs, the small book dimensions and the already available digital video resources available on the internet, Zizek's Violence does not have a great deal more to offer to either the neophyte or the acquainted student. Right for the price, but then again, not enough new to justify the monies of most whom are interested in Zizek's thought.

if you have the time to follow Zizek's lectures on youtube, on Liberalism, Euthansia of Tolerant Reason after Kant, Marxism in the Streets, Truth,Sam Harris,procedural Toilets; there is a lot duplicated, duplicitous in this nifty little paper-back, you can read it while listening to AC-DC, also from his "In Defense of Lost Causes".
Yes Zizek forgot how violent Rock n'Roll is,how it and continuously assaults our senses and sensibilities for decades now,so was the Seventies carpet bombing of Cambodia, (Kissinger had a hand in that;well they will name a library after you Henry, dont worry); but Zizek covers topicalities interestingly, perceptively; Paris Riots,("We are Here") Katrina, Middle East,Intifada, with nice reflections of context on colonialism and Israel,"Who wants two states?", cites the "Jerusalem Chalk Circle"(a twist on Brecht with another twist on King Solomon)one cannot divide in two without killing something) time of things,of nation-building; and if sovereignties came too late, what the Ruling Classes of Globe require now is for acceptance of its Rule to an extent; to be respectable,to have violence without violence;de-caffeinated, war without war, (Colin Powell),but just for things to go on as they are requires violence everyday, every minute, so Zizek says; and there are some provisos indicated by Zizek,with the help of Badiou,"we live in a worldless culture" events are not deposited in consciousness as before;events are filtered through a hermeneutical sieve of interpreted reality, Lacanian Lenses all are utilized,all the time to gauge the states of desire, what we buy, what gives us pleasure;bouts with Fukuyama, "ends of",Sam Harris; Zizek loves to name drop, but he simply explains it and puts it all in a useful exciting context, as liberalism today, what is it, who practices it, what do they want? with spokespeople-writers and court jestors as NYT(Mr.Glib) Friedman,"there are simply problems to solve. . ."no classes, no poverty, no conflicts; "liberal fascist",Zizek calls them as Peter Sloterdijk, typically the designation is extreme but Zizek wants to you to get off yer butts and think a little bit, before you plug in your IPOD to Zone out for the day.Walter Benjamin and Paul Klee's "Angelus. . . " is here he thought about violence, and the divine violence,as in "Psycho", Arbogast on the stairs,it just happens; that the imperfections of capitalism and greed, exploitation, torture and coercion, the IRS processes, are sometimes too much, we need relief, well humanity does at some point, "divine violence" is not necessary it simply is there, like the Hurricane called Katrina, showed how the USA still philosophicaly is an Old World power, in that it couldn;t provide basic sustaining lifeforms for its taxpaying citizens,racism was central to that; just allowed people to die in water, squalor.Europe as well is still very Old World order, can it solve its problems of violence, as the Paris Riots,there were racist violence ten years ago; the youth merely wanting to know if they are part of society, can you give us a Job?, or do we live in poverty our entire existence, Sarkozky really doesn't care, it would tarnish his star status, the French Ruling elites need entertainment; and divine violence?, sans-culottes,the French Revolution an event beyond what it actually is, perhaps Beethoven's entire work would have takened a different turn, been less powerful, more woosee, if it never happened, so violence, spills spirals over into the future, like the Cultural Revolution,the last one to study; where China now props up Bill Gates and Western Capital, saving it, Freddie Mac, and Frannie needs bucks the 12$$ Trillion in its mortgages, need leveling out,propping up, curious how violence works into the future, Zizek has the interests to follow these conceptual trajectories , with Hegel in the Wings for assistance;we need to be violent so the people are not,there is systemic violence, and mythic one, all never really admitted, there is more violence happening everyday than we actually see just in order to keep things as they are.. . . from not getting worse, what do we know,"What do you know. . . ?" as the CIA Agent(Cliff Robertson) tells Robert Redford at the end of "The Day of the Condor".

What an interesting book! High Wire goes a long way in explaining why our society seems so fragile in relation not only to our economic lives, but also in our relationships with our communities as a whole. This book also confirms the notion of how shifting so much risk away from employers, insurance companies and the government onto individuals creates an environment of "it's every man for himself" rather than "we're all in this together". Maybe this might explain some of the disconnectedness we experience in our day-to-day interactions. High Wire is very easy to read and very informative as well.

How is it possible to turn such complex information into a page turner? That's exactly what Peter Gosselin has managed with "High Wire". I coundn't put it down and I'm so grateful to finally put my chronic, low-level anxiety about the future into some context. This book is a must read for anyone who feels they are working harder than ever and still losing ground. Kudos and thank you Mr. Gosselin for a great book.

I just finished reading High Wire and I learned a lot from it. Peter Gosselin really gets to the heart of what has been going on with the economy and the job market over the last 25 years. The books tracks the exact changes that have occurred since I graduated from college and got my first job. Peter does a great job at explaining very complicated subjects. Any one who is going to be in the workforce and is concerned about their security must read this book so they can understand what has got us to this point in the econony and job market and be prepared for what is to come. The book is not about doom and gloom. It is about explaining change and getting the reader to think about how they need to adapt to an uncertain future.

Gosselin's "High Wire" asserts that over the past quarter-century the "ownership society" is becoming the "on-your-own society," contrary to the thinking behind the Mayflower Compact that united everyone for the common good.

Insurance is Gosselin's biggest target, and anecdotal evidence provided by actual Americans his vehicle. Private sector health insurers were exempted from professional liability due to ERISA (1974) rulings, state laws notwithstanding. Thus, these insurers have every incentive to delay and with-hold payments, and plaintiff attorneys little/no incentive to sue for damages. Similarly, homeowners (about 60%) are often surprised to find their home insurance scaled back from "guaranteed replacement cost" to "extended replacement cost" ($X + Y%), while others find coverage unavailable at any cost. Finally, pensions are increasingly threatened by the vagaries of the stock market, coupled with the time and information demands associated with it. (Gosselin documents that even Nobel Prize winners in economics do take the time to do so.)

Gosselin's most alarming revelation, however, is the fact that the odds of a family seeing an income drop of 50% or more during any 2-year interval have gone from about 5% in the 1970s to about 9% in the 2000's. The pattern is the same for all ages, income levels, and amount of education. Further, the average size workplace slid 18% during the same period; 50% in L.A. - smaller firms have always had weaker job and benefit security.

Clearly there are fewer stable jobs and sources of reliable benefits. Gosselin also emphasizes that a college education is less than touted. Large debts hanging over graduates (the average private four-year school cost increased 8X over the prior three decades, public school costs rose 7X, while median incomes rose 23%). Most "increased aid" (the rationale offered for these increases) actually consists of loans.

A major Gosselin weak point is his overemphasis on anecdotes and an underemphasis on generalizable, clear statistics. (The lack of clarity is due to his continual failure to state whether various statistics that are offered are inflation-adjusted or not.)

"High Wire's" biggest weakness, however, is his failure to provide any information/data on why jobs, earnings, and benefits are weakening. Thus, readers cannot understand the overall logic behind these dark trends (temporary, or permanent) or develop reasonable solutions (eg. simply require better treatment of workers, or also shield American corporations from rapacious competitors).

Elephants in the room that Gosselin missed include: #1: Outsourcing to Asia, legal (eg. H-1B) and illegal immigration, and automation are causing major job losses. #2: Runaway costs in higher education are largely encouraged by government funding. #3: Runaway costs in health care are also encouraged by government funding; government also has missed a large opportunity to identify and decrease wasteful spending.

The "good news" is that President Bush's effort to privatize Social Security and add it to the "ownership society" failed - just before the latest market dive.

This is a GREAT book and I would encourage every citizen of America to read it, young or old. It's actually a hair-raising book. Well researched and each chapter has a personal, true life story of a family or individual that has been challenged with the topic being discussed.

Since the other reviews to date go over the book, I want to share what I took from it. First, I got out all my insurance policies after reading the chapters on how the insurance industry has slowly & slyly sandbagged us consumers. I read them with a fine tooth comb and voila! wouldn't you know it - just like the author said they were doing, well that is what they are doing. Sneaky company (and this is one of the Big Three property/casualty companies in California and the rest of the country) well guess what, they did exactly what the author said they were doing - changing the terms of the policy in such a way that the ordinary consumer, you & me, who (unfortunately) trust our agents so well ... are/were clueless that this got by us. Yep they changed me from the Guaranteed Replacement coverage on my home to the Limited Replacement + some percentage of cost overrun. And it got by me and I'm pretty smart (at least I thought I was). Just as it has probably gotten by most of you too. I called my agent last month and he told me it was the best policy money could by, Limited but with a 150% total replacement ratio, and furthermore the company I was considering replacing them with, well they had a reputation of quoting low and then next year WHAM they would sock it to me. I don't think so because that company is the one used exclusively by AARP and I just don't think AARP would stand for that kind of treatment. But back to my agent .. funny, but my policy said ... 125%. My agent disagreed with me and spoke to me in such a way that I would never want to go look further. But I did look further and HE WAS WRONG. I called the Home Office and got clarification and it is 125%. MY AGENT DIDN'T KNOW WHAT HE SOLD ME and my agent has been my agent since 1988 - or my agent wants that commission. He's a nice guy, I really don't know. But I'm not asking him. I got very angry when I realized that I had been sandbagged and g-d forbid if my house did burn to the ground, I would end up paying out of pocket over $200,000 to rebuild it just as it is.

Just as many of the Oakland/San Diego and other parts of California that have faced total losses have had to do.

The case studies in the book are all the same - about how the families of Oakland and San Diego fires really took it on the chin. The losses above the policy limits were/are staggering. Guess what, with rare exception, I'll bet you a zillion bucks that if you are reading this review or the book, chances are you are grossly underinsured.

I changed that. I changed companies and policies in the last 2 weeks. And surprisingly, between my car, home and umbrella policy, I went DOWN $600/year in premium along with going up from $1M to $2M in my umbrella. That was worth the book right there.

Then on to the ERISA chapters. What a shocker. I really was stunned at what I read. Imagine this law, passed to protect US the workers, in reality does not protect anyone except the insurance companies. Coincidentally there was a story in the LA Times last week about a woman whose 30-yr old husband died and was covered with $400,000 in his group life policy through his job. Guess what, the company and the insurance company refused to pay the death benefit even though the deceased employee paid the premiums for over the 3 years he worked there. The widow sued in state court, the insurance company knows its rights and got it into federal court (because this is ERISA) and the grieving widow was ordered by court to get the premiums paid returned to her and no payment for the policy. And it is not appealable. Who in the world ever knew that? Did you? I didn't. Does this mean that all life insurance policies through your job won't get paid? I guess I was lucky when my dad died 21 years ago because his group life policy did pay me. But then again my dad owned the company so suspect they didn't want to futz with that claim. However the gall of the company to deny the claim and then the courts, under ERISA precedent rulings, denying the payment. I almost fell off my chair. This is just as the author described is happening in the book.

So if ERISA is undermining employee's benefits (and this includes health coverage too, not just pensions, IRA's & other employer provided plans, employer offered disability and the rest of the benefits of the job) and if ERISA is stripping all our rights of we workers, what is left?

The chapters and stories on employeer provided disability coverage almost left me in tears. I usually shed tears only when reading fiction. This was just a scandalous nightmare to read. But I believe it. And the reason I believe it is that my former husband went blind in his last job due to a detached retina-like condition and his privately held disability company policy (coincidentally the same one talked about in the book) denied him his benefits for close to 4 years. Good thing my ex is an attorney and could take them on. 4 YEARS. While my ex is an attorney what he wasn't able to do was to pull money for living expenses out of a hat along with a few rabbits. He ended up on the brink of bankruptcy with this stunt the company pulled. How an attorney that goes blind can continue to be a litigator and read his briefs is beyond me - and the disability company plays the 'let's see who can hold out the longest' game.

This really is sick stuff.

I realize this is a long review. But I decided to list real life stories to support exactly what this book is all about. I have to say, anybody reading this review that is thinking about buying the book, STOP NOW and buy this book. I came upon it at Borders by accident, it was shelved under Economics and not my favorite category which is Investments - and I don't really like economics, but this is an easy & engrossing book to read. And the time has now come at this passage of time in our history that the public, ALL OF US, need to get our heads out of the sand and meet these challenges head on, informed, and not stupidly ignorant. Ignorance costs and at this point of our historical times, NOBODY can afford to be ignorant anymore.

Please read the book. And thank you for reading this review.

As a social worker who deals with the population portrayed in this book day in and day out, I was very interested in reading a book that I hoped would help me understand a phenomenon that has intrigued me since the day I started my job. I was very pleased when I read this book as I thought that it did address its stated purpose in a factual but still thoughtful way. I enjoyed this book because the authors were able to keep away from giving the book a judgmental feel while still not appearing to condone the choices that these women made.
Although the book was a fantastic read, especially for those interested in the subject...beware. That is, the book itself is good but the subject matter is all too real and therefore all too disheartening. I say that because there is nothing in the book that I didn't already have a sneaking suspicion about: the selfishness that exists when so many people in this country, be them male/female, rich/poor, black/white, see no problem with creating and bringing a new life in to this world solely to serve their own unfulfilled needs....be them relational, monetary, social, personal, to get their "act" together, and the like.

The quotation from William Julius Wilson on the cover sounds "over the top," but it is not: "This is the most important study ever written on motherhood and marriage among low-income urban women." Edin and Kefalas set a high standard for ethnographic research. Unlike many other research projects, they did not simply "dip their feet into a flowing river" (with apologies to Heraclitus). They conducted hundreds of interviews among a diverse population over several years. One of them (Edin) actually lived for several years with her family in one of the neighborhoods: went to church there, shopped there, swapped stories about motherhood... i.e., became part of the community (really). The final study is a testament to the authors' tenacity, integrity, and professionalism. It is not difficult to understand why this book won a major award and has been so highly praised.
On a final note, if you are expecting extensive theoretical justification, you may be disappointed. This study is exceptionally well-written and rich in detail, but it is not, and does not pretend to be, "theoretical" -- at least not in the postmodern or critical sense. From my point of view, this is a merit, not a defect. Edin and Kefalas make a parsimonious, but significant claim regarding single urban mothers and support it with seemingly unimpeachable data. For most auditors, that counts as elegance. Elegance is enough.

I very much enjoyed reading 'Promises'. The depth of research is extensive. There is plenty of material here to draw your own conclusions or to append other research. My major criticism is the conflicting stories. I felt like I was reading a book written by ten different authors compiled by style in no particular order. I often felt a little sea sick. There is also a lot of redundancy. Nevertheless, there is a lot of useful original information.

Very interesting from a social perspective. Not alot is written about this subject for the lay person. I found it quite insightful.

This book examines why poor women have children prior to being married. The authors did a years-long, very intense, ethnographic study of dozens of poor women of all races in some of the worst neighbrhorhoods of Philadelphia.

The book is good. It is easy to read, and it maintains a nice balance between academic depth -- the authors are well read in their area, but are low key about it -- and engagement with their subjects. The authors care about these women, and that comes across.

The book has a number of conclusions, which are all, to some degree, unexpected.

First, the authors do not believe that the problem is poverty. Obviously, life for these women is more difficult, because they are poor, but that is not whey they have kids before they marry. After all, we have always had poor people, and, in the not so-distant past, the vast majority married before they had kids. No, the authors conclude, the fundamental reason why the poor have children before marriage is a massive cultural shift. Quite simply, marriage has been re-defined. It used to be that one could not have sex, have kids or be accepted as an adult, without being married. Now, marriage has been disconnected from all of these things. The authors see this shift as not being limited to the poor; indeed, they believe that the poor are simply following the middle class in this regard.

Second, although the authors see the poor as having the same basic values as the middle class, they believe that these values play out differently for the poor. The middle class generally gets married, prior to having children, because middle class women have alot to lose. They have careers. They have futures. Having kids, outside marriage, threatens all of this. Since the paramount goal is individual fulfillment, middle-class women do not threaten all of the good things in their lives by having children without any male support.

The poor, on the other hand, say our authors, basically have nothing in their lives which having children would threaten. They do not have a career. They work at lousy low-wage jobs, to which they can return after having kids, because what difference does it make. The authors portray their women as having so little in their lives that they see no downside to having kids by themselves. On the contrary, the authors report that poor women value children, and see the children as adding a great deal to their lives. Many of the subjects report that their lives were an out of control mess -- drinking, drugging, partying -- until they had kids, which is often reported as turning them around.

Third, this book reports a very bleak landscape between the sexes among the poor. Men are just no damm good, virtually all of the women in this book say. Men will not grow up, do not support their kids, chase other women, are often violently abusive and often wind up in jail. While most women report having a child as turning their lives around, and making them into responsibile adults, most of the men involved can not handle the responsibility and run away. It is deeply depressing to read how bitterly these women distrust the men in their lives. (I found that the account rang true, but, to be fair, the authors only spoke to poor women; they did not speak to poor men, who might give a different version.)

In the end, the book describes this odd paralled universe, in which poor women want children and marriage, but see children as easy to get and marriage as an impossible dream.

Very eye-opening book, and very depressing.

My husband who is off fighting for the Constitution sent this book to our daughter. If he had not sent it, I would want a refund. My daughter and I sat down to read the book together. She thought the drawings did not match the words and thought the author still did not like the Preamble. (HE makes mention in the begining that he was forced to think about the Constitution). There was no inspiration from this book and she hasn't picked it up again. The pictures are not exciting to children and only vaguely connect to the words. She loves the Freedom Rock version of the Preamble and and really enjoys Lynn Chaney's "America A Patriotic Primer", so I understand why he made the purchase, however it is not inspiring or uplifting or interesting.

This fun book helped me to reach my fifth grade class in a way their social studies text never would have! Catrow finds a way to take the elegant (and sometimes difficult to translate into kid-talk) language of the Preamble and not only make it simeple to understand, but really helps put the kids right in there.

He makes it clear that this is a document for all Americans, not only including kids, but maybe especially for kids.

His buddy 'Bubbs', is pictured throughout so even the less than interested can be drawn in by finding the dog...

So glad I found this!

I haven't read this book in a long time, but I plan on picking it up on my next visit to the library!
I love the illustrations, so funny! The kids on the cover, too!
If you like this book, I suggest The Kennedy White House, 1961-1963!

As David Catrow tells us in his introduction, "...For me, the Constitution is a kind of how-to book, showing us ways to have happiness, safety, and comfort...", and he uses his immeasurable talents as an artist and cartoonist to teach an inspirational and unforgettable lesson that is sure to open interesting discussions at home and school. Following a glossary of what the actual words in the Preamble of the Constitution mean, (e.g. "IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION: To come together and make things better for everyone who lives in our country. INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY: To make sure we can all have a nice life and get along with one another. TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY: For kids, parents, other grown-ups, and all the people born in our country after we are."), Mr Catrow details the meaning of these important ideals, phrase by phrase, using his marvelously bold and busy cartoon illustrations. Each two page spread is a clever feast for the eyes, rich in engaging details, manic energy, and droll humor. Perfect for youngsters 8-12, We The Kids is a witty and memorable treasure, and one of the real winners of 2002 that shouldn't be missed.

As a librarian, I recommend this book for everyone from 5 to 105. All right, this is actually a picture book that depicts some wonderful insights into our freedom and basic tenets of this great nation from a child's viewpoint. The hilarious illustrations by David Catrow will delight readers of all ages and will be fun for those who are not even studying the Constitution. For those students who are studying the Constitution, this book would be a great visual aid to memorizing the Preamble. I have not met a teenager who didn't enjoy a quick read in a great children's picture book. Teachers: Why not reduce your stressed out students and let them begin their studies with this light-hearted look into some very serious words? Buy a couple of copies and circulate them through the class. Everyone will love them. For the younger reader, ESL or special ed student there is one page explaining the basic meaning of these words and another page and a half explaining why anyone bothered to write the Constitution of the United States. It's ALL GREAT!

Very interesting articles that pertain to the evolution of social welfare in the U.S. well written.

Trattner takes the reader back in time to define how modern American has developed its current welfare state. Certainly this is a task that cannot be fully done in only 400 pages. The only weakness in this book is that it is too brief. It does not go into enough detail, but it is comprehensive enough to give a solid introduction to the modern American welfare state and the issues that face America's poor. This is a good book.

This book, though dry at times, gives a realistic and more complete look at American history. This was required reading for a college course I took. The history contained here is not what is taught in highschool and I was surprised at just how much I did not know about life in America before I was born.

America has a very ugly past and present in many ways. We have oppressed, demoralized, institutionalized, degraded, segregated, stereotyped, and persecuted millions of persons over the years. What is unfortunate is that with all our advances in business and technology... there are still single mothers living on the streets, starving with their children. There are still foreign workers being payed much less than minimum wage. There are still persons living with mental illness being drugged and institutionalized. The rich are still getting richer, as they exploit the poor and working classes.

America has much to be proud of. America also has much to be ashamed of. This book sheds light on some of the crimes that we (America) has committed against its own people, as we continue to point fingers at others wrongs.