The fate of immigrants: Emmanuel Todd
Book review - 7 pages - Social, moral & civic education
Emmanuel Todd is a historian, demographer and French anthropologist who gained popularity owing to his work on the Soviet system; he had predicted its collapse years before it took place, and more recently, he had predicted collapse of the American Empire. In ‘The fate of immigrants'...
Reinventing the Color Line Immigration and America's New Racial/Ethnic Divide
Book review - 3 pages - Social, moral & civic education
"The problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the Color Line". Writer and social reformer, W.E.B. Du Bois said at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the color line corresponded to a Black-White divide. However, from the end of the twentieth-century to the beginning of the...
"The Second Sex", Simone de Beauvoir (1949) - is the woman an accomplice to her own oppression?
Book review - 3 pages - Social, moral & civic education
“The second Sex”, by Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was published in 1949, at a time when women were considered inferior to men. In her book, Beauvoir argues that women have historically been considered abnormal and deviant, and have been refused control over their own existence, and...
The working poor: Invisible in America
Book review - 2 pages - Social, moral & civic education
The book, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by David K. Shipler, seeks to unveil the lives of countless people in America living at or below the poverty line. His intent is to describe their situations and map out the reasons for their poverty and how the cyclical nature of poverty is...
The World is Flat: A review
Book review - 3 pages - Social, moral & civic education
Thomas Friedman is, primarily, a columnist for the New York Times. Lately, his newspaper work has focused on the Bush administration and the war in the Middle East. He writes incisive, critical, analytical columns that ask questions about the way our country is handling itself in the rest of the...
World on fire: A review
Book review - 3 pages - Social, moral & civic education
Most reasonably educated, marginally politically aware Americans know by now that the world hates us. It's hard to miss—demonstrations in France, terrorism from the Middle East, and comments made worldwide after September 11 that we “got what we deserved” all point to the fact that...
Urban conflict resolution
Book review - 5 pages - Social, moral & civic education
Herbert Kohl's “36 Children” is a brutally honest account of his experiences and reflections as a sixth grade teacher in an elementary school in Harlem, New York City, during the 1960's. First published in 1967, “36 Children” describes the startling poverty, prejudice and...
The woman suffrage movement in Canada and liberation deferred? The ideas of the English-Canadian Suffragists, 1877-1918: A comparative book review
Book review - 6 pages - Social, moral & civic education
In her work entitled The Woman Suffrage Movement in Canada, Catherine Lyle Cleverdon artfully constructs narrative analysis of a social movement that gained little notoriety outside of Canada. This particular study is extremely helpful because of its ability to use existing information about the...
Habits of the Heart Individualism and Commitment in American Life
Book review - 9 pages - Social, moral & civic education
Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart Individualism and Commitment in American Life chronicles the history, definition and present condition of individualism in America, and how it has affected the lives of modern society. Bellah attempts to define individualism by mapping its evolution in...
Race Poverty and the Underclass by Christopher Jencks
Book review - 9 pages - Social, moral & civic education
In his book, Race Poverty and the Underclass, Christopher Jencks formulates a thesis that is aimed at revealing the short-comings of popular social policy remedies. He addresses options that are based on political ideologies which do not fare well in recognizing the reality of social problems in...
Two in a Bed: The Social System of Couple Bed Sharing
Book review - 5 pages - Social, moral & civic education
“Two in a Bed: The Social System of Couple Bed Sharing” by Paul C. Rosenblatt is a very detailed look at very ordinary human behaviors. Bed sharing is so common that Rosenblatt finds that it has been invisible to researchers, and taken for granted by most of the adults who participate...
Welfare and Ideology by Vic George and Paul Wilding
Book review - 5 pages - Social, moral & civic education
Political debates are often driven by what we call ideology. Nowadays we refer to ideology as a set of values and beliefs which influence individuals, politics, groups or even societies as a whole. The “critique of existing socio-economic systems, […] a view of the world, […] a...
