A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2014!Why do parents hit those they love? What effect does it have on children? What can be done to end this pattern? These are some of the questions explored in The Primordial Violence. Featuring longitudinal data from over 7,000 U.S. families as well as results from a 32 nation study, the book presents the latest research on the extent to which spanking is used in different cultures and the subsequent effects of its use...

Drugs, Alcohol, and Social Problems, a collection edited James D. Orcutt and David R. Rudy, includes 14 clearly written articles that exemplify the best of sociological scholarship on drug and alcohol problems. The readings strike a balance between constructionist, epidemiological, and ethnographic approaches to the study of drinking, drug use, and related problems such as domestic violence, crime, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. A general introduction and five section introductions w...

The marriage license as a hitting license, child abuse, sibling war is the powerful message of "Behind Closed Doors". The book is grounded in the unprecedented national survey of the extent, patterns, and causes of violence in the American family. Based on a seven-year study of over 2,000 families, the authors provide landmark insights into this phenomenon of violence and what causes Americans to inflict it on their family members. The authors explore the relationship between spousal abuse...

One of The New York Times T**op 10 Books of the Year**Winner of the An Post Irish Book of the Year, the Nero Gold Prize, and the Nero Book Award for FictionShortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Writers' Prize for FictionFinalist for the Kirkus Prize for FictionOne of The New Yorker's Essential Reads

The informative and controversial findings in this book are based on two path-breaking national surveys of American families. Both show that while the family may be the central locus of love and support, it is also the locus of risk for those who are physically assaulted. The book provides a wealth of information on gender differences and similarities in violence, and on the effects of gender roles and inequality.Two landmark American studies of violence from the National Family Violence s...

Despite being commonplace in American households a generation ago, corporal punishment of children has been subjected to criticism and shifting attitudes in recent years. Many school districts have banned it, and many child advocates recommend that parents no longer spank or strike their children. In this book, social theorist Michael Donnelly and family violence expert Murray A. Straus tap the expertise of social science scholars and researchers who address issues of corporal punishment...

The centerpiece of this collection of poems is "Presence," a sequence of forty "translations from the natural world" about a variety of settings and their amazing denizens. Lyre birds, honeycombs, sea lions, possums, all act as spurs for Murray's protean talent for description and imitation."Even with a score of volumes and a king's ransom of literary honors to his credit, Australian poet Murray refuses to take words for granted. His latest collection is a forceful blend of formalis...

In this collection of poems, farmers, fathers, poverty-stricken pioneers, and people blackened by the grist of the sugar mills are exposed to the blazing midday sun of Murray's linguistic powers. Richly inventive, tenderly perceptive, and fiercely honest, these poems surprise and bare the human in all of us.

A wonderful new collection by a wizard of contemporary poetryEverything widens with distance, in this perspective.The dog's paws, trotting, rotate his end of infinityand dam water feels a shiver few willow drapes share.Bright leaks through their wigwam re-purple the skinny beansthen rapidly the light tops treetops and is shortenedinto a day. Everywhere stands pat beside its shadowfor the great bald radiance never seen in dre...

A riveting, beautiful novel in verse by Australia's greatest contemporary poet, winner of the 1996 T. S. Eliot Prize.I never learned the old top ropes,I was always in steam.Less capstan, less climbing,more re-stowing cargo.Which could be hard and slowas farming- but to sayWhy this is Valparaiso!Or: I'm in Singapore and know my way abouttakes a long time to get stale.-from Book I, "The Middle Sea"When German-Austra...

From the "world-class Australian novelist" ( The New York Times) comes Camouflage, a deft, angular, and highly entertaining collection of stories. "The Seduction of My Sister" tells of the increasingly bizarre events between siblings when a new family moves in across the street, while "Healing" recalls a vanished time when a boy's headlong, innocent rush into certain disaster could be averted by a simple miracle. A man named Huebler decides to photograph everyone alive, a...

A new collection of poems from Les Murray that renews and transforms the contemporary world through languageIn Waiting for the Past, Les Murray employs his molten sense of language to renew and transform our experience of the world. With quicksilver verse, he conjures his rural past, the life of the poor dairy boy in Australia, as he simultaneously feels the steady tug of aging, of time pulling him back to the present. Here, syntax, sense, and sound combine...