front cover of The Economic Integration of Europe
The Economic Integration of Europe
Richard Pomfret
Harvard University Press, 2021

The clearest and most up-to-date account of the achievements—and setbacks—of the European Union since 1945.

Europe has been transformed since the Second World War. No longer a checkerboard of entirely sovereign states, the continent has become the largest single-market area in the world, with most of its members ceding certain economic and political powers to the central government of the European Union. This shift is the product of world-historical change, but the process is not well understood. The changes came in fits and starts. There was no single blueprint for reform; rather, the EU is the result of endless political turmoil and dazzling bureaucratic gymnastics. As Brexit demonstrates, there are occasional steps backward, too. Cutting through the complexity, Richard Pomfret presents a uniquely clear and comprehensive analysis of an incredible achievement in economic cooperation.

The Economic Integration of Europe follows all the major steps in the creation of the single market since the postwar establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community. Pomfret identifies four stages of development: the creation of a customs union, the deepening of economic union with the Single Market, the years of monetary union and eastward expansion, and, finally, problems of consolidation. Throughout, he details the economic benefits, costs, and controversies associated with each step in the evolution of the EU. What lies ahead? Pomfret concludes that, for all its problems, Europe has grown more prosperous from integration and is likely to increase its power on the global stage.

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front cover of Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People
Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People
Gullette, Margaret Morganroth
Rutgers University Press, 2017
Winner of the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars and the APA's Florence L. Denmark Award for Contributions to Women and Aging

When the term “ageism” was coined in 1969, many problems of exclusion seemed resolved by government programs like Social Security and Medicare. As people live longer lives, today’s great demotions of older people cut deeper into their self-worth and human relations, beyond the reach of law or public policy. In Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People, award-winning writer and cultural critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette confronts the offenders: the ways people aging past midlife are portrayed in the media, by adult offspring; the esthetics and politics of representation in photography, film, and theater; and the incitement to commit suicide for those with early signs of “dementia.”
 
In this original and important book, Gullette presents evidence of pervasive age-related assaults in contemporary societies and their chronic affects. The sudden onset of age-related shaming can occur anywhere—the shove in the street, the cold shoulder at the party, the deaf ear at the meeting, the shut-out by the personnel office or the obtuseness of a government. Turning intimate suffering into public grievances, Ending Ageism, Or How Not to Shoot Old People effectively and beautifully argues that overcoming ageism is the next imperative social movement of our time.

About the cover image:

This elegant, dignified figure--Leda Machado, a Cuban old enough to have seen the Revolution--once the center of a vast photo mural, is now a fragment on a ruined wall.  Ageism tears down the structures that all humans need to age well; to end it, a symbol of resilience offers us all brisk blue-sky energy. 
“Leda Antonia Machado” from “Wrinkles of the City, 2012.”
Piotr Trybalski / Trybalski.com. Courtesy of the artist.
 

A Declaration of Grievances

"A Declaration of Grievances" was written by Margaret Morganroth Gullette and is excerpted from her book Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People (2017, Rutgers University Press). The poster was designed by Carolyn Kerchof.​

Print the PDF (make sure to click "fit to page") and hang the Declaration up in your home or place of work. Please share this link with other people you know who care about the rights of older persons. Share on social media with the hashtags #ADeclarationOfGrievances and #EndingAgeismGullette.



For more information, an excerpt, links to reviews, and special offers on this book, go to: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/ending-ageism

Related website: (https://www.brandeis.edu/wsrc/scholars/profiles/gullette.html)

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front cover of Equality in the Nordic World
Equality in the Nordic World
Carsten Jensen
University of Wisconsin Press, 2021
By most measures, the Nordic countries regularly rank among the best in terms of equality and business friendliness. Political scientist Carsten Jensen delves into what is exceptional about equality in the region, and outlines “the four equalities” that set it apart: economic, intergenerational, gender, and health.

The four types of equality have their origins in unique political compromises made in the twentieth century. The resulting social market economies of these countries affect their growth and levels of equality even today.
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front cover of The Era of Education
The Era of Education
The Presidents and the Schools, 1965-2001
Lawrence J. McAndrews
University of Illinois Press, 2005
This study of educational policy from Lyndon Johnson through Bill Clinton focuses on three specific issues--public school aid, non-public (especially Catholic) school aid, and school desegregation--that speak to the proper role of the federal government in education as well as to how education issues embody larger questions of opportunity, exclusion, and equality in American society. Lawrence J. McAndrews traces the evolution of policy as each president developed (or avoided developing) a stance toward these issues and discusses the repercussions and implications of policy decisions for the educational community over nearly four decades.
 
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front cover of Everyday Harm
Everyday Harm
Domestic Violence, Court Rites, and Cultures of Reconciliation
Mindie Lazarus-Black
University of Illinois Press, 2007

Exposing the powerful contradictions between empowering rights and legal rites

By investigating the harms routinely experienced by the victims and survivors of domestic violence, both inside and outside of law, Everyday Harm studies the limits of what domestic violence law can--and cannot--accomplish. Combining detailed ethnographic research and theoretical analysis, Mindie Lazarus-Black illustrates the ways persistent cultural norms and ingrained bureaucratic procedures work to unravel laws designed to protect the safety of society’s most vulnerable people.

Lazarus-Black’s fieldwork in Trinidad traces a story with global implications about why and when people gain the right to ask the court for protection from violence, and what happens when they pursue those rights in court. Why is itthat, in spite of laws designed to empower subordinated people, so little results from that legislation? What happens in and around courts that makes it so difficult for people to obtain their legally available rights and protections? In the case of domestic violence law, what can such legislation mean for women’s empowerment, gender equity, and protection? How do cultural norms and practices intercept the law?

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logo for University of London Press
Exclusion and Engagement
Social Policy in Latin America
Edited by Christopher Abel and Colin M. Lewis
University of London Press, 2002

front cover of Executing Freedom
Executing Freedom
The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States
Daniel LaChance
University of Chicago Press, 2016
In the mid-1990s, as public trust in big government was near an all-time low, 80% of Americans told Gallup that they supported the death penalty. Why did people who didn’t trust government to regulate the economy or provide daily services nonetheless believe that it should have the power to put its citizens to death?

That question is at the heart of Executing Freedom, a powerful, wide-ranging examination of the place of the death penalty in American culture and how it has changed over the years. Drawing on an array of sources, including congressional hearings and campaign speeches, true crime classics like In Cold Blood, and films like Dead Man Walking, Daniel LaChance shows how attitudes toward the death penalty have reflected broader shifts in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state. Emerging from the height of 1970s disillusion, the simplicity and moral power of the death penalty became a potent symbol for many Americans of what government could do—and LaChance argues, fascinatingly, that it’s the very failure of capital punishment to live up to that mythology that could prove its eventual undoing in the United States.
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