Pound Pup Legacy

author: Nell Bernstein asin: 1565849523 binding: Hardcover list price: $25.95 USD amazon price: $19.72 USD

An intimate and heartwrenching investigation into the lives of children of imprisoned parents, by an award-winning journalist.

"I think they shouldn't have took my mama to jail….Give her the opportunity to make up for what she did. Using drugs, she's hurting herself. You take her away from me, now you're hurting me."—Terrence, a fifteen-year-old boy left to fend for himself after his mother was imprisoned for nonviolent drug possession

One in ten American children has a parent under criminal justice supervision—incarcerated, on probation, or on parole. One in thirty-three American children—and one in eight African American children—goes to sleep without access to a parent because that parent is in jail. Despite these staggering numbers, the children of prisoners remain largely invisible to society.

Following in the tradition of the bestseller Random Family, journalist Nell Bernstein shows, through the deeply moving stories of real families, how the children of the incarcerated are routinely punished for their parents' status: ignored, neglected, stigmatized, and endangered, with minimal effort made to help them cope.

Topics range from children's experiences at the time of their parent's arrest, to laws and policies that force even low-level offenders to forfeit their parental rights, to alternative sanctions that take into account prisoners' status as mothers and fathers.
All Alone in the World defines a crucial aspect of criminal justice and, in doing so, illuminates a critical new realm of human rights.

Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War author: William Saletan asin: 0520243366 binding: Paperback list price: $17.95 USD amazon price: $17.95 USD

Saletan tells how, beginning in Arkansas in 1986 during the administration of Governor Bill Clinton, the National Abortion Rights Action League repackaged the abortion issue to give it broader appeal to conservatives. Pro-choice conservatives adopted this new rhetoric and made the abortion issue their own. Saletan takes us through the key events in the ensuing story–the fight over the nomination of Judge Robert Bork, the election of Governor Doug Wilder in Virginia, the convergence of the Bush and Clinton positions on abortion in 1992, and much more–right up to the present day.

This book is a crucial lesson in how politicians and interest groups can change the way we vote, not by telling us facts or lies, but by reshaping the way we think–in part through mass marketing. Today, the abortion rights movement must ask itself what it has won and what it is fighting for. This book is sure to play a role in answering that question.

America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction author: Brian Alexander asin: 0307351327 binding: Hardcover list price: $23.95 USD amazon price: $16.29 USD

“Eye-openingly smart . . . Picking up where Sallie Tisdale’s Talk Dirty to Me left off in the ’90s, Brian Alexander’s America Unzipped appreciatively unpacks our culture’s last remaining sexual taboos. (Apparently, we’ve still got a few!)”
—Genevieve Field, cofounder of Nerve.com

“Alexander has written a book that reflects our next sexual revolution and goes behind the scenes to put a human face on this most recent development in our journey toward sexual enlightenment.”
—Barbara Keesling, Ph.D., author of The Good Girls’ Guide to Bad Girl Sex and Sexual Healing

“Entertaining, funny, shocking, smart, provocative, and extremely thoughtful . . . Alexander gains entry into some of the most bizarre worlds—think Alice in Wonderland meets Dante’s ‘Inferno’—and takes us along for the ride.”
—Candida Royalle, erotic film director and author of How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do

“With humor and curiosity, Alexander creates a powerful and entertaining look at what is really going on in the American bedroom—and sex club and adult store and even church—and demands we think about how to move ahead to create a sexually healthier society."
—Eli Coleman, Ph.D., editor of the International Journal of Sexual Health

“A clearheaded and open-minded look at the sexual revolution’s final stage.”
—Kirkus Reviews 

Book Description
Welcome to the America we don’t usually talk about, a place where that nice couple down the street could be saddling up for “pony play,” making and selling their own porn DVDs, or hosting other couples for a little flogging. As award-winning journalist Brian Alexander uncovers, fringe experimentation has gone suburban. Soccer moms, your accountant, even your own parents could be turning kinky.

Stunned by the uninhibited questions from ordinary people on his msnbc.com column, “Sexploration” (“My wife and I have heard that a lot of couples in their thirties are playing strip poker . . . as well as skinny-dipping with other couples/friends. Any idea if this is a fashionable trend or has it been going on for some time and we never knew it?” or “I am interested in bondage and hear that there are secret bondage clubs someplace. Can you help me find them?”), Brian Alexander was driven to understand Americans’ desire to get down and dirty—especially in an era where conservative family values dominate.

To find out what people are really doing—and why a country that suffered a national freak- out over Janet Jackson’s breast was enthusiastically getting in touch with its inner perv—Alexander set out on a sexual safari in modern America. Whether mixing it up at a convention of fetishists, struggling into his own pair of PVC pants for a wild night at a sex club, being tutored on dildos by a nineteen-year-old supervisor while working in an adult store, or learning the surprising ways of Biblical sex from an evangelical preacher, Alexander uses humor and insight to reveal a sexual world that is quickly redefining the phrase “polite society.”

Gonzo journalism at its funniest and kinkiest, America Unzipped is a fascinating cultural study and an eye-popping peek into the lives of people you’d least expect to find tied up and wearing latex.

The Politics of Child Abuse in America (Child Welfare) author: Lela B. Costin Howard Jacob Karger David Stoesz asin: 0195116682 binding: Paperback list price: $45.00 USD amazon price: $41.30 USD

The Politics of Child Abuse in America (Child Welfare) (Paperback)
by Lela B. Costin (Author), Howard Jacob Karger (Author), David Stoesz (Author) "In 1978 Cristina Crawford published Mommie Dearest, her account of the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her mother, the actress Joan Crawford..."

Book Description
Child abuse policy in the United States contains dangerous contradictions, which have only intensified as the public slowly accepted it as a middle class problem. One contradiction is the rapidly expanding child abuse industry (made up of enterprising psychotherapists and attorneys) which is consuming enormous resources, while thousands of poor children are seriously injured or killed, many while being "protected" by public agencies. This "rediscovery" has also led to the frenzied pursuit of offenders, resulting in the sacrifice of some innocent people. Moreover, the media's focus on the sensational details of high-visibility sexual abuse cases has helped to trivialize, if not commercialize, the child abuse problem. As such, child abuse has gone from a social problem to a social spectacle. By the 1980s the child welfare system had become a virtual "nonsystem," marked by a staggering turnover of staff, unmanageable caseloads, a severe shortage of funding, and caseloads composed of highly dysfunctional families (many with drug-related problems). To make room for these families, public agencies rationed services by increasingly screening-out child abuse reports which contained little likelihood of serious bodily harm. In The Politics of Child Abuse in America, the authors argue that child abuse must be viewed as a public safety problem. This redefinition would make it congruent with other family-based social trends, including the crackdown on domestic violence. Children must have the same legal protection currently extended to physically and sexually abused women. This can be done by creating a "Children's Authority," which would have the overall charge for protecting children. Specifically, Children's Authorities would have the responsibility for providing the six main functions of child protection: investigation, enforcement, placement services, prevention and education, family support, and research and development. Offering a unique perspective on the cold reality of this crisis, The Politics of Child Abuse in America will be a provocative work for social workers and human service personnel, as well as the general reader concerned with this timely issue.

Woman, Child for Sale: The New Slave Trade in the 21st Century author: Gilbert King asin: 1596090057 binding: Paperback list price: $9.95 USD amazon price: $9.95 USD

Woman, Child for Sale: The New Slave Trade in the 21st Century (Paperback)
by Gilbert King (Author), Eleanor Clift (Foreword) "Every ten minutes, a woman or child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor..."

From Publishers Weekly
Fast on the heels of the State Department's annual report on human trafficking comes this brief but frightening look at a $12-billion-a-year global industry. It's essentially a clip job—King's research into today's slave trade is based on remarks by concerned politicians, news stories and prior academic works, as well as on an exhaustive, chapter-long recap of the aforementioned 2003 Trafficking in Persons Report—but it is a valuable compilation of stories and statistics. A brief look at the history of slavery gives an overview of bondage in the Greco-Roman empire and a timeline of the African slave trade. Short recitations of trafficking case studies—a 14-year-old Thai girl whose promised "good job" turned out to be prostitution, dozens of Peruvian nationals forced to work in factories and turn their wages over to a Long Island family—serve as illustrative but cursory examples. The information here, though cobbled together from prior sources, is inherently thought-provoking and is set forth clearly if inelegantly. Those seeking a quick course in the deplorable milieu of modern slave trafficking will find King's volume useful.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Marta Salij, Detroit Free Press (10/24/04)
Incendiary…includes all the statistics and background you could wish to have…

Migration and Immigration: A Global View (A World View of Social Issues) asin: 0313330441 binding: Hardcover list price: $55.00 USD amazon price: $55.00 USD

Migration and Immigration: A Global View (A World View of Social Issues) (Hardcover)  by Maura I. Toro-Morn (Editor), Marixsa Alicea (Editor)

Book Description
The post-World War II period has been called "the age of migration," since an unprecedented number of people worldwide have been on the move. This reference surveys migration and immigration past and present in 14 representative countries. Historical, social, political, and economic consequences of migration are considered. Students and researchers will find the synthesis indispensable and the format ideal for comparisons. The collective analysis of the contributors, who hail from a range of disciplines, ultimately defies the simple characterization of migration as a choice of people seeking better income opportunities. The authors are sensitive to the ways that race, class, and gender dynamics influence the composition of migratory flows, the reasons why people migrate, and the outcomes of population movements. Each chapter explicates the human cost of migration, giving readers a better understanding of social issues underlying migration at the beginning of the 21st century.

Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill author: Robert Whitaker asin: 0738207993 binding: Paperback list price: $17.50 USD amazon price: $11.90 USD

One of Whitaker's answers draws upon the historic and current assumptions of a physical cause for schizophrenia. This resulted in cruel and unusual physical treatments--from ice-water immersion and bloodletting to the more contemporary electroshock, lobotomy, and drug therapies with dangerous side effects. This physical cause model leads to Whitaker's more provocative explanation: that mental illness has become a profit center. He offers disturbing details about how good business for drug companies makes for bad medicine in treating schizophrenia. From drug companies skewing their studies and patient/subjects kept in the dark about experiments to the cozy relationship between the American Psychiatric Association and drug companies, Whitaker underlines the mistreatment of the mentally ill. This courageous and compelling book succeeds as both a history of our attitudes toward mental illness and a manifesto for changing them. --Barbara Mackoff --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Tooth removal. Bloodletting. Spinning. Ice-water baths. Electroshock therapy. These are only a few of the horrifying treatments for mental illness readers encounter in this accessible history of Western attitudes toward insanity. Whitaker, a medical writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist, argues that mental asylums in the U.S. have been run largely as "places of confinement facilities that served to segregate the misfits from society rather than as hospitals that provided medical care." His evidence is at times frightening, especially when he compares U.S. physicians' treatments of the mentally ill to medical experiments and sterilizations in Nazi Germany. Eugenicist attitudes, Whitaker argues, profoundly shaped American medicine in the first half of the 20th century, resulting in forced sterilization and other cruel treatments. Between 1907 and 1927, roughly 8,000 eugenic sterilizations were performed, while 10,000 mentally ill Americans were lobotomized in the years 1950 and 1951 alone. As late as 1933, there were no states in which insane people could legally get married. Though it covers some of the same territory as Sander Gilman's Seeing the Insane and Elaine Showalter's The Female Malady, Whitaker's richer, more detailed book will appeal to those interested in medical history, as well as anyone fascinated by Western culture's obsessive need to define and subdue the mentally ill. Agent, Kevin Lang.

The Outsiders (Puffin Modern Classics) author: S.E. Hinton asin: 0141314575 binding: Paperback list price: $13.87 USD amazon price: $13.87

From AudioFile
S.E. Hinton's 1967 classic, published when she was a freshman in college, is as appropriate and realistic today as it was then. Fourteen-year-old Ponyboy, his brothers, and his friends are poor outcasts--"greasers." They have little but always stick together. After they're victims of the town's "socs (socials)--kids with lots of money, tough cars, and chips on their shoulders--everyone comes to realize how deep and serious their divide is. Narrator Jim Fyfe presents Ponyboy and his group, along with the socs and their circle, with '60s' language appropriate to each socioeconomic group. No character is all good or all bad, and when the final violent confrontation erupts, listeners are sorrowful but not shocked. This moving story is excellent for all ages and perfect to illustrate both sides of bullying. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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