Ordinary Americans

Ordinary Americans
Author: Linda R. Monk
Publisher: Hyperion Books
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1994
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Download Ordinary Americans Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A collection of first-person accounts by average Americans detailing the first 500 years of U.S. history. Multicultural perspectives are emphasized.

Forgotten Americans

Forgotten Americans
Author: Isabel Sawhill
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0300241062

Download Forgotten Americans Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

Liberty Tree

Liberty Tree
Author: Alfred F. Young
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2006-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814796850

Download Liberty Tree Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

With the publication of Liberty Tree, acclaimed historian Alfred F. Young presents a selection of his seminal writing as well as two provocative, never-before-published essays. Together, they take the reader on a journey through the American Revolution, exploring the role played by ordinary women and men (called, at the time, people out of doors) in shaping events during and after the Revolution, their impact on the Founding generation of the new American nation, and finally how this populist side of the Revolution has fared in public memory. Drawing on a wide range of sources, which include not only written documents but also material items like powder horns, and public rituals like parades and tarring and featherings, Young places ordinary Americans at the center of the Revolution. For example, in one essay he views the Constitution of 1787 as the result of an intentional accommodation by elites with non-elites, while another piece explores the process of ongoing negotiations would-be rulers conducted with the middling sort; women, enslaved African Americans, and Native Americans. Moreover, questions of history and modern memory are engaged by a compelling examination of icons of the Revolution, such as the pamphleteer Thomas Paine and Boston's Freedom Trail. For over forty years, history lovers, students, and scholars alike have been able to hear the voices and see the actions of ordinary people during the Revolutionary Era, thanks to Young's path-breaking work, which seamlessly blends sophisticated analysis with compelling and accessible prose. From his award-winning work on mechanics, or artisans, in the seaboard cities of the Northeast to the all but forgotten liberty tree, a major popular icon of the Revolution explored in depth for the first time, Young continues to astound readers as he forges new directions in the history of the American Revolution.

America as an Ordinary Country

America as an Ordinary Country
Author: Richard Rosecrance
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2019-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501743120

Download America as an Ordinary Country Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

If the possibilities for peace are to be increased in the next generation, America should change its role in world affairs from dominant superpower to ordinary country. That is the conclusion reached by ten distinguished specialists, five of them writing from abroad, as they reflect on recent U.S. foreign policy and survey its prospects. Ranging over crucial issues in military affairs, in the political sphere, and in the field of economics, their essays point out errors and misjudgments of the past and offer realistic, thought-provoking recommendations for the future.

Ordinary Americans

Ordinary Americans
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre: United States
ISBN:

Download Ordinary Americans Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Democracy Lives in Darkness

Democracy Lives in Darkness
Author: Emily Van Duyn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2021
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0197557015

Download Democracy Lives in Darkness Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"Republicans and Democrats increasingly distrust, avoid, and wish harm upon those from the other party. To make matters worse, they also increasingly reside among like-minded others and are part of social groups that share their political beliefs. All of this can make expressing a dissenting political opinion hard. Yet digital and social media have given people new spaces for political discourse and community, and more control over who knows their political beliefs and who does not. With Democracy Lives in Darkness, Van Duyn looks at what these changes in the political and media landscape mean for democracy. She uncovers and follows a secret political organization in rural Texas over the entire Trump presidency. The group, which organized out of fear of their conservative community in 2016, has a confidentiality agreement, an email listserv and secret Facebook group, and meets in secret every month. By building relationships with members, she explores how and why they hide their beliefs and what this does for their own political behavior and for their community. Drawing on research from communication, political science, and sociology along with survey data on secret political expression, she finds that polarization has led even average partisans to hide their political beliefs from others. And although intensifying polarization will likely make political secrecy more common, she argues that this secrecy is not just evidence that democracy is hurting, but that it is still alive; that people persist in the face of opposition and that this matters if democracy is to survive"--

Dressed for the Photographer

Dressed for the Photographer
Author: Joan L. Severa
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Total Pages: 628
Release: 1995
Genre: Clothing and dress
ISBN: 9780873385121

Download Dressed for the Photographer Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A visual analysis of the dress of middle-class Americans from the mid- to late-19th century. Using images and writings, it shows how even economically disadvantaged Americans could wear styles within a year or so of current fashion.

Chain of Title

Chain of Title
Author: David Dayen
Publisher: New Press, The
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2016-05-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1620971593

Download Chain of Title Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In the depths of the Great Recession, a cancer nurse, a car dealership worker, and an insurance fraud specialist helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history—a scandal that implicated dozens of major executives on Wall Street. They called it foreclosure fraud: millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it. Fiscal Times columnist David Dayen recounts how these ordinary Floridians challenged the most powerful institutions in America armed only with the truth—and for a brief moment they brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees.

American Story

American Story
Author: Bob Dotson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2013-03-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101606150

Download American Story Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

“These are remarkable and poignant stories that need to be told.” —Ken Burns More than six million people watch Bob Dotson’s Emmy award-winning segment, American Story, on NBC’s Today Show. For the last four decades, Dotson has traveled the country searching out inspiring individuals who quietly perform everyday miracles. In the process, he has become the treasured cartographer of America’s heart and soul. Today’s news is overwhelmingly grim; it’s also told by journalists who travel in herds as they trail politicians and camp out at big stories. In American Story, Dotson shines a light on America’s neglected corners, introducing readers to the ordinary Americans who have learned to fix what really matters.

The Moral Underground

The Moral Underground
Author: Lisa Dodson
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2010-01-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 159558529X

Download The Moral Underground Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A “fascinating” look at the disconnect between corporate policies and workers’ real lives—and the everyday heroes who try to help (Publishers Weekly). For the poor, there are challenges every day that they don’t have extra money to solve: a sick kid, car trouble, an unexpected dentist bill. The obstacles can make it harder to hold on to a job—but a job loss would be catastrophic. However, there are countless unsung heroes who bend or break the rules to help those millions of Americans with impossible schedules, paychecks, and lives make it from paycheck to paycheck. This book tells their stories. Whether it’s a nurse choosing to treat an uninsured child, a supervisor deciding to overlook infractions, or a restaurant manager sneaking food to a worker’s children, middle-class Americans are secretly refusing to be complicit in a fundamentally unfair system that puts a decent life beyond the reach of the working poor. In this tale of a kind of economic disobedience—told in whispers to Lisa Dodson over the course of eight years of research across the country—hundreds of supervisors, teachers, and health care professionals describe intentional acts of defiance that together tell the story of a quiet revolt, of a moral underground that has grown in response to an immoral economy. It documents a whole new phenomenon—people reaching across America’s economic fault line—and provides an account of the human consequences and lives behind the business-page headlines. “If only this book had been published in 2007. Then the hundreds of people interviewed by Lisa Dodson would have been able to pass along an important piece of advice: What’s good for business is not necessarily good for America.” —Time