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American Childhood
Risks and Realities
Schneider, Dona
Rutgers University Press, 1995
What is happening to American youth today? There is a mountain of statistics gathered about our children, but it is often hard to know what the numbers mean. Dona Schneider argues that "sound- bite statistics" on teenage pregnancy or child abuse can mislead us and create bad public policy. But a closer look at those same statistics can give us a window on tomorrow's public health and social problems.

To show how the statistics can both disguise and highlight problems, Schneider alternates a discussion of the numbers with vivid encounters with individual children and adults: the middle-class black high school student's offhand explanation about how to get a gun; a vital statistics bureau worker's astonishment at his own classification as Hispanic; a young woman's pleasure in holding down a job after teachers dismissed her as learning disabled; and a latchkey child's nightmare of coming home from school to an empty house when she was sick.

This book guides us through the morass of numbers bandied about to describe the state of America's children—what the numbers tell us and what they don't—and it offers a call for action. Comprehensive in its treatment of all groups of children and accessible in style, this book is essential for anyone concerned about children in American society.
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American Empire
The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy
Andrew J. Bacevich
Harvard University Press, 2002

In a challenging, provocative book, Andrew Bacevich reconsiders the assumptions and purposes governing the exercise of American global power. Examining the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton--as well as George W. Bush's first year in office--he demolishes the view that the United States has failed to devise a replacement for containment as a basis for foreign policy. He finds instead that successive post-Cold War administrations have adhered to a well-defined "strategy of openness." Motivated by the imperative of economic expansionism, that strategy aims to foster an open and integrated international order, thereby perpetuating the undisputed primacy of the world's sole remaining superpower. Moreover, openness is not a new strategy, but has been an abiding preoccupation of policymakers as far back as Woodrow Wilson.

Although based on expectations that eliminating barriers to the movement of trade, capital, and ideas nurtures not only affluence but also democracy, the aggressive pursuit of openness has met considerable resistance. To overcome that resistance, U.S. policymakers have with increasing frequency resorted to force, and military power has emerged as never before as the preferred instrument of American statecraft, resulting in the progressive militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

Neither indictment nor celebration, American Empire sees the drive for openness for what it is--a breathtakingly ambitious project aimed at erecting a global imperium. Large questions remain about that project's feasibility and about the human, financial, and moral costs that it will entail. By penetrating the illusions obscuring the reality of U.S. policy, this book marks an essential first step toward finding the answers.

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Are We There Yet?
The Myths and Realities of Autonomous Vehicles
Edited by Michael A. Pagano
University of Illinois Press, 2020
Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology represents a possible paradigm shift in our way of life. But complex challenges and obstacles impose a reality at odds with the utopian visions propounded by AV enthusiasts in the private and public sectors.
 
The new volume in the Urban Agenda series examines the technological questions still surrounding autonomous vehicles and the uncertain societal and legislative impact of widespread AV adoption. Assessing both short- and long-term concerns, the authors probe how autonomous vehicles might change transportation but also land use, energy consumption, mass transit, commuter habits, traffic safety, job markets, the freight industry, and supply chains. At the same time, the essays discuss opportunities for industry, researchers, and policymakers to make the autonomous future safer, more efficient, and more mobile.
 
Contributors: Austin Brown, Stan Caldwell, Chris Hendrickson, Kazuya Kawamura, Taylor Long, and P. S. Srira.
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Beyond Health, Beyond Choice
Breastfeeding Constraints and Realities
Edited by Paige Hall Smith, Bernice L Hausman, and Miriam Labbok
Rutgers University Press, 2012

Current public health promotion of breastfeeding relies heavily on health messaging and individual behavior change. Women are told that “breast is best” but too little serious attention is given to addressing the many social, economic, and political factors that combine to limit women’s real choice to breastfeed beyond a few days or weeks. The result: women’s, infants’, and public health interests are undermined.  Beyond Health, Beyond Choice examines how feminist perspectives can inform public health support for breastfeeding.

Written by authors from diverse disciplines, perspectives, and countries, this collection of essays is arranged thematically and considers breastfeeding in relation to public health and health care; work and family; embodiment (specifically breastfeeding in public); economic and ethnic factors; guilt; violence; and commercialization. By examining women’s experiences and bringing feminist insights to bear on a public issue, the editors attempt to reframe the discussion to better inform public health approaches and political action. Doing so can help us recognize the value of breastfeeding for the public’s health and the important productive and reproductive contributions women make to the world.

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Breaking the Banks
Representations and Realities in New England Fisheries, 1866-1966
Matthew McKenzie
University of Massachusetts Press, 2018
With skillful storytelling, Matthew McKenzie weaves together the industrial, cultural, political, and ecological history of New England's fisheries through the story of how the Boston haddock fleet—one of the region's largest and most heavily industrialized—rose, flourished, and then fished itself into near oblivion before the arrival of foreign competition in 1961. This fleet also embodied the industry's change during this period, as it shucked its sail-and-oar, hook-and-line origins to embrace mechanized power and propulsion, more sophisticated business practices, and political engagement.

Books, films, and the media have long portrayed the Yankee fisherman's hard-scrabble existence, as he faced brutal weather on the open seas and unnecessary governmental restrictions. As McKenzie contends, this simplistic view has long betrayed commercial fisheries' sophisticated legislative campaigns in Washington, DC, as they sought federal subsidies and relief and, eventually, fewer constricting regulations. This clash between fisheries' representation and their reality still grips fishing communities today as they struggle to navigate age-old trends of fleet consolidation, stock decline, and intense competition.
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Climate Justice and Public Health
Realities, Responses, and Reimaginings for a Better Future
Edited by Rajini Srikanth and Linda Thompson
University of Massachusetts Press, 2024

When climate disasters like hurricanes, heatwaves, and tsunamis strike, they reveal the inequities of our social, political, and economic structures. They also lay bare the negative impacts of these structures on the health and safety of all people, and particularly socioeconomically vulnerable groups. With original contributions from scholars from a wide range of diverse fields—­including environmental studies, public health, legal studies, urban planning, literary studies, and nursing—­Climate Justice and Public Health examines this nexus of climate change, which has become impossible to ignore in the twenty-­first century.

Expanding the climate and health equity discussions to populations all over the globe, the contributors in this volume address an impressive and broad range of topics that include Indigenous health and cultural practices, mental and emotional health, senior health, and impacts on African American communities. Collectively, they present radical new ways of confronting these issues and propose holistic solutions.

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Environmentally Devastated Neighborhoods
Perceptions, Policies, and Realities
Greenberg, Michael
Rutgers University Press, 1996
Only 3% of all Americans believe they live in bad neighborhoods. But 30% to 45% of those who live in places with crime and illegal drug sales, rats and stray dogs, hazardous waste sites, factory pollution, and abandoned and blighted buildings rate their neighborhood as poor quality. Even when these neighborhoods have good schools, parks, and other amenities, their resident's ratings do not go up. This holds true no matter who is asked - young, old, men or women, middle class, working class, or on welfare. Local health and planning officials corroborate resident perceptions. It is particularly noticeable that stress from living near a toxic waste site - the hazard that gets the biggest attention in terms of dollars spent - is low on the resident's list of fears about their neighborhoods. They'd much prefer to see the money put to fixing the immediate dangers on their block. But because federal and state government policies for protecting public health, lowering crime, and saving the environment are divided into separate bureaucratic cubby-holes, effective planning to improve these stressed neighborhoods is difficult. Beginning with the call for a definition of "environment" that fits the realities of these places, the authors argue for and propose policy initiatives that address all the desperate needs of these beleaguered neighborhoods. This book is essential reading for students, academics, and professionals in environmental studies, public health, urban studies and planning, as well as grassroots community organizers.
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Life Beyond the Holocaust
Memories and Realities
Mira Ryczke Kimmelman
University of Tennessee Press, 2005
“For the rare Jews of Poland who managed to survive the Holocaust, the very idea of a return to what had been one’s homeland might seem both physically and psychologically impossible, perhaps even absurd. Yet it is precisely this paradoxical journey that Mira Kimmelman undertakes with great dignity and generosity. In words that are both direct and intimate, she exposes the ambivalence of what it means to learn to live again after Auschwitz—to experience love, raise a family, and assume a steadfast place in the Jewish community of a new land. At the same time, she acknowledges the abyss of losses that can never be retrieved. Perhaps even more importantly, Mira reveals how the pain of a return is transformed into a new adventure of discovery and reconciliation to be shared with her sons, their families, and her readers for generations to come.”—Karen D. LevyProfessor of French StudiesUniversity of Tennessee

“This book is written with intelligence, sensitivity, and eloquence. As a post-Holocaust memoir, it is an excellent volume, inasmuch as it brings out the scope of the Holocaust, its impact on future generations, and how it affects our understanding of past generations. The author explores and elucidates the problems of liberation from death and the return to life that forever confront Holocaust survivors.” —David Patterson Bornblum Chair in Judaic Studies University of Memphis

“Life beyond the Holocaust brings to mind in its power to document painful memories Primo Levi’s The Reawakening. Ms. Kimmelman’s memoir is, above all, a beautiful love story of herself and her husband, Max. She writes in a vernacular style that evokes her experiences with specific details. Her book is alive … and celebrates in good prose human values triumphing over radical evil.” —Hugh Nissenson
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Myths and Realities of Caribbean History
Basil A. Reid
University of Alabama Press, 2009
This book seeks to debunk eleven popular and prevalent myths about Caribbean history. Using archaeological evidence, it corrects many previous misconceptions promulgated by history books and oral tradition as they specifically relate to the pre-Colonial and European-contact periods. It informs popular audiences, as well as scholars, about the current state of archaeological/historical research in the Caribbean Basin and asserts the value of that research in fostering a better understanding of the region’s past.
 
Contrary to popular belief, the history of the Caribbean did not begin with the arrival of Europeans in 1492. It actually started 7,000 years ago with the infusion of Archaic groups from South America and the successive migrations of other peoples from Central America for about 2,000 years thereafter. In addition to discussing this rich cultural diversity of the Antillean past, Myths and Realities of Caribbean History debates the misuse of terms such as “Arawak” and “Ciboneys,” and the validity of Carib cannibalism allegations.
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Other Times, Other Realities
Toward a Theory of Psychoanalytic Treatment
Arnold Modell
Harvard University Press

Nearly a century has passed since Freud's theories unleashed a revolution in our understanding of the human psyche. Yet, as Arnold Modell firmly points out, we still do not possess a theory that explains how psychoanalysis works. Other Times, Other Realities provides brilliant insight into this perplexing problem and lays the foundation for a comprehensive theory of psychoanalytic treatment. Modell's careful consideration of Freudian theory, the interpretations of contemporary ego psychology, and the contribution of object theory discloses the changing significance of the fundamental elements of the therapeutic process.

In Other Times, Other Realities, readers will discover an illuminating synthesis of concepts underlying the various interpretations of the psychoanalytic process.

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Post-Racial No More
Race, Realities, and Resources of Ethnic Minority Families: Groves Monographs on Marriage and Family (Volume 7)
Helyne Frederick
Michigan Publishing Services, 2022

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Realities and Relationships
Soundings in Social Construction
Kenneth J. Gergen
Harvard University Press, 1994
Recent attempts to challenge the primacy of reason—and its realization in foundationalist accounts of knowledge and cognitive formulations of human action—have focused on processes of discourse. Drawing from social and literary accounts of discourse, Kenneth Gergen considers these challenges to empiricism under the banner of “social construction.” His aim is to outline the major elements of a social constructionist perspective, to illustrate its potential, and to initiate debate on the future of constructionist pursuits in the human sciences generally and psychology in particular.
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Two Californias
The Myths And Realities Of A State Divided Against Itself
Michael Di Leo and Eleanor Smith
Island Press, 1983
Two Californias explores for the first time the pervasive folk myth that Northern and Southern California should really be separate states. You hear it all the time in the media and on the street - but is it true?

Michael DiLeo and Eleanor Smith look closely and discover that there are profound truths embedded in the folk tradition. And equally profound misconceptions. Probing the surprising and little-known history of the split-state movement, the authors find that its underlying sentiments have been part of California politics and culture since territorial days. What the issues are today, what their implications are for our lives in the 1980s, and what we can do about them are the focus of this fascinating book.

The current water controversy, perhaps the most crucial in the state's history, cannot be resolved until the two Californias make peace with each other. No other book confronts the environmental and philosophical problems that plague California and have nationwide echoes as thoroughly and as intelligently as Two Californias does. Two Californias is entertaining – and it also thought-provoking. It is very likely to change the ways we think about living together and sharing resources in the 1980s.

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