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Books

• American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare, by Jason DeParle, Viking Books, 2004 -- In 1996, Congress passed a welfare reform law that removed nine million women and children from the welfare rolls. "Did it work? In his definitive book on this unprecedented upheaval in social policy, New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Jason DeParle follows three women in one extended family to a set of surprising answers."
• Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream -- "Barbara Ehrenreich's remarkable follow-up to Nickel and Dimed, examines life in the ever-increasing population of the white-collar unemployed."
• Fast Food Nation -- "...the story of fast food is the story of postwar America.... Fast food has unleashed the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, spawned an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad."
• Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins -- "the first book to explore the lucrative opportunities for businesses in an era of approaching environmental limits ... three leading business visionaries explain how the world is on the verge of a new industrial revolution—one that promises to transform our fundamental notions about commerce and its role in shaping our future."
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich -- "How can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson."
• The Blue Pages: A Directory of Companies Rated by Their Politics and Practices, by Carol Pott -- "Using this pocket directory, consumers can be politically conscientious about something they do every day — shop. The Blue Pages lists companies‛ political contributions to the Democratic and Republican parties and rates them by their partisanship. Each listing has a paragraph describing unique features of their business practices that may include charitable causes, social programs, labor practices, domestic partner and child care benefits, nondiscrimination policies, treatment of disabled employees, and environmental impact."
• The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences, by Louis Uchitelle --"an eye-opening account of layoffs in America—their questionable necessity, their overuse, and their devastating impact on individuals at all income levels. Yet despite all this, they are accelerating. The award-winning New York Times economics writer Louis Uchitelle explains how, in the mid-1970s, the first major layoffs, initiated as a limited response to the inroads of foreign competition, spread and multiplied, in time destroying the notion of job security and the dignity of work. We see how the barriers to layoffs tumbled, and how by the late 1990s the acquiescence was all but complete. In a compelling narrative, the author traces the rise of job security in the United States to its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, and then the panicky U-turn."
• The Raw Deal: How Myths and Misinformation About the Deficit, Inflation, and Wealth Impoverish America, by Ellen Frank -- "How economic rhetoric and policy have been hijacked to serve the interests of the wealthy... Over the past twenty years, Americans have been fed a mash of confusing financial and economic information. This information has distorted popular understanding of how the economy really operates and camouflaged the transformation of economic policy from a tool for improving the living standards of all to a tool for securing the perquisites of those with financial wealth. Sifting through confusing rhetoric on everything from the stock market to the federal budget to the global financial system, Frank reveals how financial interests came to dominate U.S. economic policy and lays out in clear and engaging prose the basis of real wealth and economic well-being."
  “This lucid, accessible book is a great corrective; everyone should read it.”
  —James K. Galbraith, author of Created Unequal

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