For-Profit Democracy

For-Profit Democracy
Author: Loka Ashwood
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2018-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300235143

A fascinating sociological assessment of the damaging effects of the for†‘profit partnership between government and corporation on rural Americans Why is government distrust rampant, especially in the rural United States? This book offers a simple explanation: corporations and the government together dispossess rural people of their prosperity, and even their property. Based on four years of fieldwork, this eye†‘opening assessment by sociologist Loka Ashwood plays out in a mixed†‘race Georgia community that hosted the first nuclear power reactors sanctioned by the government in three decades. This work serves as an explanatory mirror of prominent trends in current American politics. Churches become havens for redemption, poaching a means of retribution, guns a tool of self†‘defense, and nuclear power a faltering solution to global warming as governance strays from democratic principles. In the absence of hope or trust in rulers, rural racial tensions fester and divide. The book tells of the rebellion that unfolds as the rights of corporations supersede the rights of humans.

Rooted

Rooted
Author: David R. Pichaske
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2009-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 158729673X

David Pichaske has been writing and teaching about midwestern literature for three decades. In Rooted, by paying close attention to text, landscape, and biography, he examines the relationship between place and art. His focus is on seven midwestern authors who came of age toward the close of the twentieth century, their lives and their work grounded in distinct places: Dave Etter in small-town upstate Illinois; Norbert Blei in Door County, Wisconsin; William Kloefkorn in southern Kansas and Nebraska; Bill Holm in Minneota, Minnesota; Linda Hasselstrom in Hermosa, South Dakota; Jim Heynen in Sioux County, Iowa; and Jim Harrison in upper Michigan. The writers' intimate knowledge of place is reflected in their use of details of geography, language, environment, and behavior. Yet each writer reaches toward other geographies and into other dimensions of art or thought: jazz music and formalism in the case of Etter; gender issues in the case of Hasselstrom; time past and present in the case of Kloefkorn; ethnicity and the role of the artist in the case of Blei; magical realism in the case of Heynen; the landscape of literature in the case of Holm; and the curious worlds of academia, best-selling novels, and Hollywood films in the case of Harrison. The result, Pichaske notes, is the growing away from roots, the explorations and alter egos of these writers of place, and the tension between the “here” and “there” that gives each writer's art the complexity it needs to transcend provincial boundaries. Quoting generously from the writers, Pichaske employs a practical, jargon-free literary analysis fixed in the text, making Rooted interesting, readable, and especially useful in treating the literary categories of memoir and literary essay that have become important in recent decades.

Censored Books

Censored Books
Author: Nicholas J. Karolides
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2001
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780810840386

A collection of essays confronting the censorship issue, including six authors' views and defenses of individual books.

Another Day in the Death of America

Another Day in the Death of America
Author: Gary Younge
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 156858976X

Winner of the 2017 J. Anthony Lukas PrizeShortlisted for the 2017 Hurston/Wright Foundation AwardFinalist for the 2017 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in JournalismLonglisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction On an average day in America, seven children and teens will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, award-winning journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost during one such day. It could have been any day, but he chose November 23, 2013. Black, white, and Latino, aged nine to nineteen, they fell at sleepovers, on street corners, in stairwells, and on their own doorsteps. From the rural Midwest to the barrios of Texas, the narrative crisscrosses the country over a period of twenty-four hours to reveal the full human stories behind the gun-violence statistics and the brief mentions in local papers of lives lost. This powerful and moving work puts a human face-a child's face-on the "collateral damage" of gun deaths across the country. This is not a book about gun control, but about what happens in a country where it does not exist. What emerges in these pages is a searing and urgent portrait of youth, family, and firearms in America today.

Chi Town

Chi Town
Author: Norbert Blei
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2003-03-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0810120402

A rollicking tour of Chicago, courtesy of the city's legends and everymen.

Seeing and Being Seen

Seeing and Being Seen
Author: David M. Wrobel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2001
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

You can see them cruising for Indian art in Santa Fe, waiting for Old Faithful at Yellowstone, or pausing for shrimp cocktails on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. The American West attracts vacationers of every stripe, who comb its varied landscapes for the ultimate trip. And for better or worse, those who come to see this multifaceted region have changed what they have come to see. "Seeing and Being Seen" explores the history of tourism in the American West and examines its effects on both the tourists and the places and people they visit. Scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and business-Patricia Nelson Limerick, Hal Rothman, and others-join government and National Park Service professionals to investigate the dilemmas that tourism poses for western communities, from economic and environmental questions to cultural change. The selections are organized around three broad topics: scholarly perceptions of tourism, tourists, and those toured upon; tourism in its historical context, including an assessment of its cultural impact on communities and on tourists themselves; and the history and impact of tourism on the West's national parks, with particular emphasis on efforts to maintain the delicate balance between natural preservation and public enjoyment. These essays cover the span of tourism history, from early-twentieth-century "See America First" campaigns to the problematic place of automobiles in national parks today. They also pay special attention to policy choices that the growth of tourism sometimes forces on communities, as towns try to bounce back from failed economies by capitalizing on an "Old West" image or even, in the case of Kellogg, Idaho, "Old Bavarian." In response, the authors offer suggestions by which communities can begin to make rational choices about the role and place of tourism in their lives. "Seeing and Being Seen" is enlightening and necessary reading for scholars, policy makers, residents of the West, and even tourists themselves."

Bet the Farm

Bet the Farm
Author: Beth Hoffman
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 164283159X

"Eloquent and detailed...It's hard to have hope, but the organized observations and plans of Hoffman and people like her give me some. Read her book -- and listen." -- Jane Smiley, The Washington Post In her late 40s, Beth Hoffman decided to upend her comfortable life as a professor and journalist to move to her husband's family ranch in Iowa--all for the dream of becoming a farmer. There was just one problem: money. Half of America's two million farms made less than $300 in 2019, and many struggle just to stay afloat. Bet the Farm chronicles this struggle through Beth's eyes. She must contend with her father-in-law, who is reluctant to hand over control of the land. Growing oats is good for the environment but ends up being very bad for the wallet. And finding somewhere, in the midst of COVID-19, to slaughter grass finished beef is a nightmare. If Beth can't make it, how can farmers who confront racism, lack access to land, or don't have other jobs to fall back on hack it? Bet the Farm is a first-hand account of the perils of farming today and a personal exploration of more just and sustainable ways of producing food.

Storm Lake

Storm Lake
Author: Art Cullen
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0525558888

"A reminder that even the smallest newspapers can hold the most powerful among us accountable."—The New York Times Book Review Watch the documentary Storm Lake on PBS. Iowa plays an outsize role in national politics. Iowa introduced Barack Obama and voted bigly for Donald Trump. But is it a bellwether for America, a harbinger of its future? Art Cullen’s answer is complicated and honest. In truth, Iowa is losing ground. The Trump trade wars are hammering farmers and manufacturers. Health insurance premiums and drug prices are soaring. That’s what Iowans are dealing with, and the problems they face are the problems of the heartland. In this candid and timely book, Art Cullen—the Storm Lake Times newspaperman who won a Pulitzer Prize for taking on big corporate agri-industry and its poisoning of local rivers—describes how the heartland has changed dramatically over his career. In a story where politics, agri­culture, the environment, and immigration all converge, Cullen offers an unsentimental ode to rural America and to the resilient people of a vibrant community of fifteen thousand in Northwest Iowa, as much sur­vivors as their town.