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The Words That Built America
by Georgia Department of EducationThis collection of documents creates civic awareness, and an understanding of the values that make America great.
The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution
by Linda R. MonkFrom the book: In this book, you will hear the voices of America's founders and fanatics, of Supreme Court justices and civil rights workers. Among this cacophony are rock star Ted Nugent, first-grader Ruby Bridges, actor Charlton Heston, gay rights activist Michael Hardwick, ex-con Clarence Earl Gideon, and pro-life protester Norma McCorvey. As these stories prove, the Constitution is not self-enforcing and depends upon citizens for its support. Judge Learned Hand emphasized this fact during World War II: I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes, liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. For the Constitution to have meaning, it must be not only the words we recite, but also the words we live by. [This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 6-8 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution
by Linda R. Monk<P>THE WORDS WE LIVE BY takes an entertaining and informative look at America's most important historical document, now with discussions on new rulings on hot button issues such as immigration, gay marriage, gun control, and affirmative action. <P>In THE WORDS WE LIVE BY, Linda Monk probes the idea that the Constitution may seem to offer cut-and-dried answers to questions regarding personal rights, but the interpretations of this hallowed document are nearly infinite. For example, in the debate over gun control, does "the right of the people to bear arms" as stated in the Second Amendment pertain to individual citizens or regulated militias? What do scholars say? Should the Internet be regulated and censored, or does this impinge on the freedom of speech as defined in the First Amendment? These and other issues vary depending on the interpretation of the Constitution. <P>Through entertaining and informative annotations, THE WORDS WE LIVE BY offers a new way of looking at the Constitution. Its pages reflect a critical, respectful and appreciative look at one of history's greatest documents. THE WORDS WE LIVE BY is filled with a rich and engaging historical perspective along with enough surprises and fascinating facts and illustrations to prove that your Constitution is a living--and entertaining--document. <P>Updated now for the first time, THE WORDS WE LIVE BY continues to take an entertaining and informative look at America's most important historical document, now with discussions on new rulings on hot button issues such as immigration, gay marriage, and affirmative action.
The Words of Abraham Lincoln
by Abraham LincolnFrom the "Four score and seven years ago" that every American schoolchild knows to personal notes and dozens of memorable letters, debates, and speeches from a critical time in this nation's history, here is a remarkable collection of Lincoln's writings. Through them, we can follow the sixteenth president's development from country lawyer to healer of a wounded nation. Arranged thematically, The Words of Abraham Lincoln brings together his early writings, his notes on courtship, marriage, and the family, his thoughts on slavery, including the full text of the Emancipation Proclamation, and his letters to his generals during the Civil War, among other subjects. This book includes eight historical photographs and a chronology. Two hundred years after his birth, Lincoln's writing endures. Witty and wise, Lincoln speaks today as powerfully as he did when he was president.
The Words of My Father: Love and Pain in Palestine
by Yousef BashirA Palestinian American recalls his adolescence in Gaza during the Second Intifada and how he made a commitment to peace in this transformative memoir.In the Gaza Strip, growing up on land owned by his family for centuries, fourteen-year-old Yousef Bashir was preoccupied with soccer, school pranks, and meeting his father’s impossibly high standards. Dignified and empathetic, kind yet strict, Yousef’s father was a pillar of strength for his family and community. Though he and Yousef butted heads fiercely, they loved each other unconditionally. Despite an Israeli settlement hovering on its periphery, the Gaza of Yousef’s childhood could only be described as a paradise.That all changed when the Second Intifada exploded, and Israeli soldiers seized the Bashir family home. Yousef was forced to learn the rules of a new life in captivity and to watch his father treat the invading soldiers as honored guests—a testament not only to his father’s desire for peace between Palestine and Israel but also to his unshakeable belief that it was truly within reach. Yet nothing could prepare Yousef or his father for the Israeli bullet that would instantly transform both of their lives . . . A riveting tale of a father and son, of reckoning and redemption, Yousef’s story is a heart-wrenching reminder in these troubled times that forgiveness is a gift—and a choice.
The Words of Winston Churchill (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Jonathan Locke HartThe Words of Winston Churchill, a study that ranges over the course of a rich, controversial and remarkable career, is about the power and art of his language as a writer and speaker. Churchill used words as the greatest of poets and orators do, and did so in Parliament and for the people, Britain and the empire, in war and peace, facing the changes in the world, and resisting Hitler and the Nazis. Drawing on the traditions of poetics, rhetoric and textual commentary, the study concentrates on Churchill’s writing and is sensitive to texts and contexts and to the archive. A central matter is Churchill speaking in Parliament and the reception of his speeches there for over six decades, although his work as a writer and a speaker outside the House of Commons is also important. Churchill speaks to the House, the people, Britain, the Empire, the Commonwealth and the world and, in crisis, defends freedom and democracy.
The Words of Winston Churchill: Speeches 1933-1940 (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Jonathan Locke HartThis book focuses on a close analysis of selected speeches of Winston Churchill in the House of Commons and some of the responses from fellow MPs from 1933-1940 in peace and war, during the rise of Hitler, and concentrates on foreign affairs. The study will appeal to those interested in Churchill, freedom, tyranny, diplomacy, war and conflict, democracy, politics, the 1930s, the Second World War, Britain, the English-speaking world, Canada, the United States, the British Empire and Commonwealth, Europe, France, Asia, Germany, totalitarianism, Parliament and legislative assemblies, rhetoric, language, style, speech-writing, oral and written communication, literature, history and other areas. The debate between autocracy and the tyrannical totalitarian on the one hand and democracy on the other is the debate of those times and ours. The reader will find many parallels, some chilling, with our own times. Churchill and his contemporaries have much to teach us.Churchill was key to our world history and is a key to understanding what is at stake in the world now.
The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah VowellVowell explores the Puritans, the moral, philosophical and spiritual ancestors of our nation, and discovers something far different from what their uptight reputation suggests.
The Work At Home Sourcebook, 10th Edition
by Lynie ArdenThis indispensable directory by the author of "Franchises You Can Run From Home" contains information not found in any other book on the subject. The Work at Home Sourcebook gives specific information for finding, applying for, and getting work with AT&T, J. C. Penney, and more than 1,000 other companies that routinely hire qualified home-workers. Contact information, job descriptions and requirements, and details on pay and benefits are also included. Other chapters cover handicrafts, franchises, telecommuting, learning how to work at home, and ideas for businesses that can be started from home with a minimal investment. All of the information for this edition has been reviewed and updated and includes many new opportunities.
The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850-1920: Second Edition
by Daniel T. RodgersHow the rise of machines changed the way we think about work—and about success. The phrase &“a strong work ethic&” conjures images of hard-driving employees working diligently for long hours. But where did this ideal come from, and how has it been buffeted by changes in work itself? While seemingly rooted in America&’s Puritan heritage, perceptions of work ethic have actually undergone multiple transformations over the centuries. And few eras saw a more radical shift than the American industrial age. Daniel T. Rodgers masterfully explores the ways in which the eclipse of small-scale workshops by mechanized production and mass consumption triggered far-reaching shifts in perceptions of labor, leisure, and personal success. He also shows how the new work culture permeated society, including literature, politics, the emerging feminist movement, and the labor movement. A staple of courses in the history of American labor and industrial society, Rodgers&’s sharp analysis is as relevant as ever as twenty-first-century workers face another shift brought about by technology. The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850–1920 is a classic with critical relevance in today&’s volatile economic times.
The Work We Need: 'The humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs’ Jonathan Freedland
by Hilary Cottam'Brimming with ideas to transform the future, Hilary Cottam takes us on a fascinating journey to discover how to make work work' KATE RAWORTH, author of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS'Cottam is the humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs - and this book our roadmap to a better future' JONATHAN FREEDLAND, author of THE ESCAPE ARTIST'An act of radical hope, radical listening and radical humility . . . I loved it' RORY STEWARTWork, for decades, has been debated and discussed as a narrow economic category. Instead, Hilary Cottam identifies work as a cultural force at the heart of good lives, strong communities and a sense of a shared national destiny. Crucially, in these dramatic times, she shows how we can shape this force to meet technological change, our ecological crisis and the challenges of the world's deep injustices. We can create a work revolution. Ambitious but rooted in the ideas of everyday experts - real workers from all walks of life - this is a realistic and hopeful book. Hilary Cottam has crossed the UK and the USA; she's spent time in communities considered by outsiders as 'left behind' and in places at the centre of financial and technological power. Drawing on a fascinating range of sources - historians, trade unionists, business leaders, philosophers and most originally, hours of her imaginative workshops with workers - Hilary Cottam boldly asks: how can we redesign work? Our challenges - political, social, economic and environmental - are tangled and growing. But so are the imaginative solutions. In this exciting, inspiring and optimistic book, Hilary shows us how we could work differently and live better. 'Twenty-first century people cannot give their best if tied down to twentieth-century patterns of work. Hilary Cottam provides the roadmap for the required transformation. Timely . . . guides the changes needed' CARLOTA PEREZ'Exposes what motivates workers today - not the things most business leaders think - and shows how new thinking would benefit us all. Compelling' MARTHA LANE FOX'Urgent, compelling and ultimately hopeful . . . Cottam demonstrates that a better future, based on reciprocity and mutual collaboration, is not only possible but its seeds are already here. Necessary and Inspiring' CAROLINE LUCAS, Green Party MP and author of ANOTHER ENGLAND
The Work We Need: 'The humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs’ Jonathan Freedland
by Hilary Cottam'Brimming with ideas to transform the future, Hilary Cottam takes us on a fascinating journey to discover how to make work work' KATE RAWORTH, author of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS'Cottam is the humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs - and this book our roadmap to a better future' JONATHAN FREEDLAND, author of THE ESCAPE ARTIST'An act of radical hope, radical listening and radical humility . . . I loved it' RORY STEWARTWork, for decades, has been debated and discussed as a narrow economic category. Instead, Hilary Cottam identifies work as a cultural force at the heart of good lives, strong communities and a sense of a shared national destiny. Crucially, in these dramatic times, she shows how we can shape this force to meet technological change, our ecological crisis and the challenges of the world's deep injustices. We can create a work revolution. Ambitious but rooted in the ideas of everyday experts - real workers from all walks of life - this is a realistic and hopeful book. Hilary Cottam has crossed the UK and the USA; she's spent time in communities considered by outsiders as 'left behind' and in places at the centre of financial and technological power. Drawing on a fascinating range of sources - historians, trade unionists, business leaders, philosophers and most originally, hours of her imaginative workshops with workers - Hilary Cottam boldly asks: how can we redesign work? Our challenges - political, social, economic and environmental - are tangled and growing. But so are the imaginative solutions. In this exciting, inspiring and optimistic book, Hilary shows us how we could work differently and live better. 'Twenty-first century people cannot give their best if tied down to twentieth-century patterns of work. Hilary Cottam provides the roadmap for the required transformation. Timely . . . guides the changes needed' CARLOTA PEREZ'Exposes what motivates workers today - not the things most business leaders think - and shows how new thinking would benefit us all. Compelling' MARTHA LANE FOX'Urgent, compelling and ultimately hopeful . . . Cottam demonstrates that a better future, based on reciprocity and mutual collaboration, is not only possible but its seeds are already here. Necessary and Inspiring' CAROLINE LUCAS, Green Party MP and author of ANOTHER ENGLAND
The Work We Need: 'The humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs’ Jonathan Freedland
by Hilary Cottam'Brimming with ideas to transform the future, Hilary Cottam takes us on a fascinating journey to discover how to make work work' KATE RAWORTH, author of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS'Cottam is the humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs - and this book our roadmap to a better future' JONATHAN FREEDLAND, author of THE ESCAPE ARTIST'An act of radical hope, radical listening and radical humility . . . I loved it' RORY STEWARTWork, for decades, has been debated and discussed as a narrow economic category. Instead, Hilary Cottam identifies work as a cultural force at the heart of good lives, strong communities and a sense of a shared national destiny. Crucially, in these dramatic times, she shows how we can shape this force to meet technological change, our ecological crisis and the challenges of the world's deep injustices. We can create a work revolution. Ambitious but rooted in the ideas of everyday experts - real workers from all walks of life - this is a realistic and hopeful book. Hilary Cottam has crossed the UK and the USA; she's spent time in communities considered by outsiders as 'left behind' and in places at the centre of financial and technological power. Drawing on a fascinating range of sources - historians, trade unionists, business leaders, philosophers and most originally, hours of her imaginative workshops with workers - Hilary Cottam boldly asks: how can we redesign work? Our challenges - political, social, economic and environmental - are tangled and growing. But so are the imaginative solutions. In this exciting, inspiring and optimistic book, Hilary shows us how we could work differently and live better. 'Twenty-first century people cannot give their best if tied down to twentieth-century patterns of work. Hilary Cottam provides the roadmap for the required transformation. Timely . . . guides the changes needed' CARLOTA PEREZ'Exposes what motivates workers today - not the things most business leaders think - and shows how new thinking would benefit us all. Compelling' MARTHA LANE FOX'Urgent, compelling and ultimately hopeful . . . Cottam demonstrates that a better future, based on reciprocity and mutual collaboration, is not only possible but its seeds are already here. Necessary and Inspiring' CAROLINE LUCAS, Green Party MP and author of ANOTHER ENGLAND
The Work of Nations
by Robert B. ReichThere is no longer such a thing as an American economy, say Robert Reich at the beginning of this brilliant book. What does it mean to be a nation when money, goods, and services know no borders? What skills will be the most valuable in the coming century? And how can our country best ensure that all its citizen have a share in the new global economy? Robert B. Reich, the widely respected and bestselling author of The Next American Frontier and The Resurgent Liberal, defines the real challenge facing the United States in the 21st century in this trail-blazing book. Original, readable, and vastly informed, The Work of Nations is certain to set a standard for the next generation of policy-makers.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism
by Robert B. ReichWhat skills will be the most valuable in the coming century? How can our country ensure that all its citizens have a share in the new global economy? The author addresses these questions in a trail-blazing new book that is certain to guide a generation of policy makers.
The Work of Politics: Making a Democratic Welfare State
by Steven KleinThe Work of Politics advances a new understanding of how democratic social movements work with welfare institutions to challenge structures of domination. Klein develops a novel theory that depicts welfare institutions as “worldly mediators,” or sites of democratic world-making fostering political empowerment and participation within the context of capitalist economic forces. Drawing on the writings of Weber, Arendt, and Habermas, and historical episodes that range from the workers' movement in Bismarck's Germany to post-war Swedish feminism, this book challenges us to rethink the distribution of power in society, as well as the fundamental concerns of democratic theory. Ranging across political theory and intellectual history, The Work of Politics provides a vital contribution to contemporary thinking about the future of the welfare state.
The Work of Repair: Capacity after Colonialism in the Timber Plantations of South Africa (Thinking from Elsewhere)
by Thomas CousinsIn the timber plantations in northeastern South Africa, laborers work long hours among tall, swaying lines of eucalypts, on land once theirs. In 2008, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, timber corporations distributed hot cooked meals as a nutrition intervention to bolster falling productivity and profits. But life and sustenance are about much more than calories and machinic bodies. What is at stake is the nurturing of capacity across all domains of life—physical, relational, cosmological—in the form of amandla. An Nguni word meaning power, strength or capacity, amandla organizes ordinary concerns with one’s abilities to earn a wage, to strengthen one’s body, and to take care of others; it describes the potency of medicines and sexual vitality; and it captures a history of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle for freedom.The ordinary actions coordinated by and directed at amandla do not obscure the wounding effects of plantation labor or the long history of racial oppression, but rather form the basis of what the Algerian artist Kader Attia calls repair. In this captivating ethnography, Cousins examines how amandla, as the primary material of the work of repair, anchors ordinary scenes of living and working in and around the plantations. As a space of exploitation that enables the global paper and packaging industry to extract labor power, the plantation depends on the availability of creative action in ordinary life to capitalize on bodily capacity. The Work of Repair is a fine-grained exploration of the relationships between laborers in the timber plantations of KwaZulu-Natal, and the historical decompositions and reinventions of the milieu of those livelihoods and lives. Offering a fresh approach to the existential, ethical and political stakes of ethnography from and of late liberal South Africa, the book attends to urgent questions of postapartheid life: the fate of employment; the role of the state in providing welfare and access to treatment; the regulation of popular curatives; the queering of kinship; and the future of custom and its territories. Through detailed descriptions, Cousins explicates the important and fragile techniques that constitute the work of repair: the effort to augment one’s capacity in a way that draws on, acknowledges, and reimagines the wounds of history, keeping open the possibility of a future through and with others.
The Worker Center Handbook: A Practical Guide for Starting and Building the New Labor Movement
by Kim Bobo Marien Casillas PabellonWorker centers are becoming an important element in labor and community organizing and the struggle for fair pay and decent working conditions for low-wage workers, especially immigrants. There are currently more than two hundred worker centers in the country, and more start every month. Most of these centers struggle as they try to raise funds, maintain stable staff, and build a membership base. For this book, Kim Bobo and Marién Casillas Pabellón, two women with extensive experience supporting and leading worker centers, have interviewed staff at a broad range of worker centers with the goal of helping others understand how to start and build their organizations. This book is not theoretical, but rather is designed to be a practical workbook for staff, boards, and supporters of worker centers.Geared toward groups that want to build worker centers, this book discusses how to survey the community, take on an initial campaign, recruit leaders, and raise seed funds. Bobo and Casillas Pabellón also provide a wealth of advice to help existing centers become stronger and more effective. The Worker Center Handbook compiles best practices from around the country on partnering with labor, enlisting the assistance of faith communities and lawyers, raising funds, developing a serious membership program, integrating civic engagement work, and running major campaigns. The authors urge center leaders to both organize and build strong administrative systems. Full of concrete examples from worker centers around the country, the handbook is practical and honest about challenges and opportunities.
The Worker: Dominion and Form
by Laurence Paul Hemming Bogdan Costea Ernst JüngerWritten in 1932, just before the fall of the Weimar Republic and on the eve of the Nazi accession to power, Ernst Jünger's The Worker: Dominion and Form articulates a trenchant critique of bourgeois liberalism and seeks to identify the form characteristic of the modern age. Jünger's analyses, written in critical dialogue with Marx, are inspired by a profound intuition of the movement of history and an insightful interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy. Martin Heidegger considered Jünger "the only genuine follower of Nietzsche," singularly providing "an interpretation which took shape in the domain of that metaphysics which already determines our epoch, even against our knowledge; this metaphysics is Nietzsche's doctrine of the 'will to power.'" In The Worker, Jünger examines some of the defining questions of that epoch: the nature of individuality, society, and the state; morality, justice, and law; and the relationships between freedom and power and between technology and nature. This work, appearing in its entirety in English translation for the first time, is an important contribution to debates on work, technology, and politics by one of the most controversial German intellectuals of the twentieth century. Not merely of historical interest, The Worker carries a vital message for contemporary debates about world economy, political stability, and equality in our own age, one marked by unsettling parallels to the 1930s.
The Workers' Festival
by Steve Penfold Craig HeronFor most Canadians today, Labour Day is the last gasp of summer fun: the final long weekend before returning to the everyday routine of work or school. But over its century-long history, there was much more to the September holiday than just having a day off.In The Workers' Festival, Craig Heron and Steve Penfold examine the complicated history of Labour Day from its origins as a spectacle of skilled workers in the 1880s through its declaration as a national statutory holiday in 1894 to its reinvention through the twentieth century. The holiday's inventors hoped to blend labour solidarity, community celebration, and increased leisure time by organizing parades, picnics, speeches, and other forms of respectable leisure. As the holiday has evolved, so too have the rituals, with trade unionists embracing new forms of parading, negotiating, and bargaining, and other social groups re-shaping it and making it their own. Heron and Penfold also examine how Labour Day's monopoly as the workers' holiday has been challenged since its founding, with alternative festivals arising such as May Day and International Women's Day.The Workers' Festival ranges widely into many key themes of labour history - union politics and rivalries, radical movements, religion (Catholic and Protestant), race and gender, and consumerism/leisure - as well as cultural history - public celebration/urban procession, urban space and communication, and popular culture. From St. John's to Victoria, the authors follow the century-long development of the holiday in all its varied forms.
The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from the New Deal to the New Democrats (American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law)
by Eva BertramIn the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the United States suffered the most sustained and extensive wave of job destruction since the Great Depression. When families in need sought help from the safety net, however, they found themselves trapped in a system that increasingly tied public assistance to private employment. In The Workfare State, Eva Bertram recounts the compelling history of the evolving social contract from the New Deal to the present to show how a need-based entitlement was replaced with a work-conditioned safety net, heightening the economic vulnerability of many poor families.The Workfare State challenges the conventional understanding of the development of modern public assistance policy. New Deal and Great Society Democrats expanded federal assistance from the 1930s to the 1960s, according to the standard account. After the 1980 election, the tide turned and Republicans ushered in a new conservative era in welfare politics. Bertram argues that the decisive political struggles took place in the 1960s and 1970s, when Southern Democrats in Congress sought to redefine the purposes of public assistance in ways that would preserve their region's political, economic, and racial order. She tells the story of how the South—the region with the nation's highest levels of poverty and inequality and least generous social welfare policies—won the fight to rewrite America's antipoverty policy in the decades between the Great Society and the 1996 welfare reform. Their successes provided the foundation for leaders in both parties to build the contemporary workfare state—just as deindustrialization and global economic competition made low-wage jobs less effective at providing income security and mobility.
The Workhouse: The People, the Places, the Life Behind Doors
by Simon Fowler&“A poignant account&” of the reality behind these famous Victorian institutions where the poor resided (The Independent). During the nineteenth century, the workhouse cast a shadow over the lives of the English poor. The destitute and the desperate sought refuge within its forbidding walls. And it was an ever-present threat if poor families failed to look after themselves properly. In this fully updated and revised edition of his bestselling book, Simon Fowler takes a fresh look at the institution that most of us are familiar with only from Dickens novels or films, and the people who sought help from it. He looks at how the system of the Poor Law of which the workhouse was a key part was organized, and the men and women who ran the workhouses or were employed to care for the inmates. But above all this is the moving story of the tens of thousands of children, men, women and the elderly who were forced to endure grim conditions to survive in an unfeeling world. &“Draws powerfully on letters from The National Archives ... brings out the horror, but it is fair-minded to those struggling to be humane within an inhumane system.&”—The Independent &“A good introduction.&”—The Guardian
The Working Class Majority
by Michael ZweigIn this memoir of the Hudson River and of her family, Susan Fox Rogers writes from a fresh perspective: the seat of her kayak. Low in the water, she explores the bays and the larger estuary, riding the tides, marveling over sturgeons and eels, eagles and herons, and spotting the remains of the ice and cement industries. After years of dipping her paddle into the waters off the village of Tivoli, she came to know the rocks and tree limbs, currents and eddies, mansions and islands so well that she claimed that section of the river as her own: her reach. Woven into Rogers's intimate exploration of the river is the story of her life as a woman in the outdoors¿rock climbing and hiking as well as kayaking. Rogers writes of the Hudson River with skill and vivacity. Her strong sense of place informs her engagement with a waterway that lured the early Dutch settlers, entranced nineteenth-century painters, and has been marked by decades of pollution. The river and the communities along its banks become partners in Rogers's life and vivid characters in her memoir. Her travels on the river range from short excursions to the Saugerties Lighthouse to a days-long journey from Tivoli to Tarrytown and a circumnavigation of Manhattan Island, while in memory she ventures as far as the Indiana Dunes and the French Pyrenees. In a fluid, engaging voice, My Reach mixes the genres of memoir, outdoor adventure, natural and unnatural history. Rogers's interest in the flora and fauna of the river is as keen as her insight into the people who live and travel along the waterway. She integrates moments of description and environmental context with her own process of grieving the recent deaths of both parents. The result is a book that not only moves the reader but also informs and entertains.
The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism
by Henry OlsenIn this sure to be controversial book in the vein of The Forgotten Man, a political analyst argues that conservative icon Ronald Reagan was not an enemy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, but his true heir and the popular program’s ultimate savior.Conventional political wisdom views the two most consequential presidents of the twentieth-century—FDR and Ronald Reagan—as ideological opposites. FDR is hailed as the champion of big-government progressivism manifested in the New Deal. Reagan is seen as the crusader for conservatism dedicated to small government and free markets. But Henry Olsen argues that this assumption is wrong.In Ronald Reagan: New Deal Republican, Olsen contends that the historical record clearly shows that Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal itself were more conservative than either Democrats or Republicans believe, and that Ronald Reagan was more progressive than most contemporary Republicans understand. Olsen cuts through political mythology to set the record straight, revealing how Reagan—a longtime Democrat until FDR’s successors lost his vision in the 1960s—saw himself as FDR’s natural heir, carrying forward the basic promises of the New Deal: that every American deserves comfort, dignity, and respect provided they work to the best of their ability. Olsen corrects faulty assumptions driving today’s politics. Conservative Republican political victories over the last thirty years have not been a rejection of the New Deal’s promises, he demonstrates, but rather a representation of the electorate’s desire for their success—which Americans see as fulfilling the vision of the nation’s founding. For the good of all citizens and the GOP, he implores Republicans to once again become a party of "FDR Conservatives"—to rediscover and support the basic elements of FDR (and Reagan’s) vision.
The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism
by Jack Barnes"Schools under capitalism are not institutions of learning but of social control, aimed at reproducing the class relations and privileges of the prevailing order," Jack Barnes explains. "Until society is reorganized so that education is a human activity from the time we are very young until the time we die, there will be no education worthy of working, creating humanity. That is the historical truth".