Primitive, dangerous, low-paying, crooked, exploitive--boxing, in all but a few cases, offered its athletes very little while taking everything. Why does boxing exist? What accounted for its decades-long popularity? What does its presence on the sport history landscape say about America? 

Jeffrey T. Sammons looks at how boxing reflected the society that fostered it at different points in history. In the time of John L. Sullivan, the sport provided an arena for testing law, order, and social growth. Jack Johnson's career reflected the racism, nationalism, and xenophobia of the Progressive era. At its popular peak in the 1920s, boxing expressed tensions as disparate as the tug-of-war between modernism and tradition and the women's rights movement. From there, Sammons traces how the sport intertwined with Nazi antisemitism, reflected the hopes of the New Deal, produced the seminal figure Joe Louis, and stood at the nexus of the union of organized crime with business and television. Finally, he shows how Muhammad Ali and reactions to him exposed the shifting tides of racial issues and American involvement in Vietnam.

Can the law promote moral values even in pluralistic societies such as the United States? Drawing upon important federal legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, legal scholar and moral theologian Cathleen Kaveny argues that it can. In conversation with thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Pope John Paul II, and Joseph Raz, she argues that the law rightly promotes the values of autonomy and solidarity. At the same time, she cautions that wise lawmakers will not enact mandates that are too far out of step with the lived moral values of the actual community.

According to Kaveny, the law is best understood as a moral teacher encouraging people to act virtuously, rather than a police officer requiring them to do so. In Law’s Virtues Kaveny expertly applies this theoretical framework to the controversial moral-legal issues of abortion, genetics, and euthanasia. In addition, she proposes a moral analysis of the act of voting, in dialogue with the election guides issued by the US bishops. Moving beyond the culture wars, this bold and provocative volume proposes a vision of the relationship of law and morality that is realistic without being relativistic and optimistic without being utopian.

One child in five in America is the child of immigrants, and their numbers increase each year. Very few will return to the country they barely remember. Who are they, and what America do they know?

Based on an extraordinary interdisciplinary study that followed 400 newly arrived children from the Caribbean, China, Central America, and Mexico for five years, this book provides a compelling account of the lives, dreams, and frustrations of these youngest immigrants. Richly told portraits of high and low achievers are packed with unexpected ironies. When they arrive, most children are full of optimism and a respect for education. But poor neighborhoods and dull--often dangerous--schools can corrode hopes. The vast majority learn English--but it is the English of video games and the neighborhood, not that of standardized tests.

For some of these children, those heading off to college, America promises to be a land of dreams. These lucky ones have often benefited from caring mentors, supportive teachers, or savvy parents. For others, the first five years are marked by disappointments, frustrations, and disenchantment. How can we explain their varied academic journeys?

The children of immigrants, here to stay, are the future--and how they adapt will determine the nature of America in the twenty-first century.

Who would have thought that Joycelyn Elders, born into a family that chopped cotton and trapped raccoons to survive, would grow up to be Surgeon General of the United States? Or that Clarence Thomas, brought up by his barely literate grandfather, would someday be a Justice of the Supreme Court? Certainly not statisticians, who tell us that impoverished backgrounds are fairly accurate predictors of impoverished futures. This book seeks out the stories behind the exceptions: those who, against all odds, have made the American myth of rags-to-riches a reality.

For more than ten years Charles Harrington and Susan Boardman explored the life histories of successful Americans forty to fifty-five years old--those from poor homes, whose parents had not completed high school, and those from the middle class. Comparing the routes to success of these two groups--the one by various courses of their own construction, the other by a well-laid path--the authors are able to show where their efforts and qualities diverge, and where they coincide.

Joycelyn Elders and Clarence Thomas are examples of the "pathmakers" of this work. While Paths to Success reveals certain consistencies between these pathmakers' approaches and those of their middle-class counterparts, it also exposes striking differences between men and women, blacks and whites. These differences, fully described here, illuminate the ways in which opportunities, serendipities, and impediments intersect with personal resources, strategies, and choices to produce success where we least expect it.